The First Lady, Madam Zyneb Jammeh, on Saturday February 2, officially opened the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) 2002 Telefood International Food Fair held at the Kanifing Municipal Council grounds.

In his remarks, the FAO resident representative in The Gambia, Dr Heimo Mikkola said Telefood was a global initiative of the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) to increase public awareness of world hunger. "Everyday, more than 800 million people suffer from chronic hunger and more than half of those people are in Africa," remarked Dr Mikkola. "Donations to Telefood accounts are financially small, self-contained agriculture, livestock and fisheries projects to help rural families produce more food," said Dr Mikkola.

FAO is organising different Telefood projects every year in order to raise money to fund new projects. The funds have been used to finance numerous telefood projects.

Speaking at the occasion, the secretary of state for agriculture, Hassan Sallah, said the presence of the First Lady was an opportunity to look at the possibility of creation of another important scheme with a possible code name, Operation Feed-the-Nation, modelling it along Operation save-a-baby, the brain child of the First Lady.

He commended the government for its efforts at combating malnutrition in The Gambia with the establishment of a lot of projects such as the National Nutrition Council, headed by the vice-president, Isatou Njie-Saidy.

On poverty alleviation, SOS Sallah revealed that government was in the process of developing a Poverty Reduction Strategy Programme, in terms of food security. Present at the occasion were the Secretaries of State for Education, Hon. Ndong-Jatta and the Secretary of State for Fisheries and Natural Resources, Hon. Waffa Ogoo. Also present was the Kanifing Municipality Chairman.