A delegation of five Vietnamese agricultural experts led by Dr. Tong Xuan, Principal of An Giang University, began a visit to Sierra Leone on August 20 to initiate a cooperation program between the two countries to cultivate Vietnamese rice in Sierra Leone.
In a meeting with Dr. Xuan in Beijing in 2006, Mr. Sarna Monde, Minister of Agriculture and Food Safety, asked Viet Nam to help his country in developing its agricultural industry. On a later trip to Viet Nam, Monde brought back ten varieties of Vietnamese rice to Sierra Leone to test on domestic farmland.
However, most of the Vietnamese rice only yielded three tons per hectare, much lower than the yields experienced in Viet Nam. As a result, Sierra Leone expressed its hope that Vietnamese specialists would help the country by providing direct instructions on the cultivation of the rice.
Sierra Leone's population of five million people consumes 600,000 tons of rice, of which 60% is imported. The country has one million hectares suitable for rice cultivation and experiences similar weather to that in Viet Nam’s Mekong Delta. Therefore, it is believed that Vietnamese specialists are fully capable of helping the country to apply new farming techniques to rice cultivation.
On this year’s trip, about 50 different varieties of rice were brought to Sierra Leone for testing on local farmland, and a small irrigation works is soon to be built by Vietnamese specialists.
According to plan, in May 2008, a group of 20 skilled farmers from the Mekong Delta will be invited to Sierra Leone to provide local farmers with detailed knowledge of rice cultivation.
