APRACA Secretary General attended the second National level dissemination workshop related to the IFAD regional grant project ‘RuFBeP’ which was held in Hanoi, Vietnam during 5-6 September 2018 on and hosted by Vietnam Bank for Social Policies (VBSP) in collaboration with State Bank of Vietnam (SBV). This National Workshop was held to disseminate the results of IFAD grant project RuFBeP and discuss the policy level issues on encouraging innovations in rural finance to support the sustainable development goals. The dissemination workshop was attended by 131 participants from 87 organizations which include APRACA member institutions, government agencies, civil society organizations, and financial institutions involved in agricultural and rural finance as well as embassies and international agencies active in Vietnam.

The Secretary General of APRACA was invited by the Groupe Credit Agricole Du Maroc, Morocco to train the bankers from all over Africa on Agricultural Value Chain Finance. The training programme was a part of the series of international training programme organized by African Rural and Agricultural Credit Association (AFRACA) in Rabat, Morocco during 2-6 July 2018. This training programme was targeted for the future trainers in Africa and aims to provide trainees with a general understanding of agricultural value chain finance (AgVCF). It covered the AgVCF approaches, business models, financial tools that may be used in AgVCF, and lessons using case studies all over the globe for enhancing the learning process.

APRACA hosted the Board members of Association of Ethiopian Microfinance Institutions (AMFI) in Thailand during 9-18 July 2018 Association organized by Skydive Technologies and Consulting (member of APRACA). The delegation of the Board f AMFI were keen to learn the experiences and good practices in agricultural value chain development and financing to Thailand with a focus on specific Commodities and Products that are of similar interest to the Ethiopian MFIs as well.

In response of the request received from the Directorate of Livestock Market Promotion, Government of Nepal, APRACA organized to conduct a learning and exposure visit for their senior officials to Thailand. There were 10 officials from the directorate visited three provinces of Thailand which included the livestock fair, poultry development and marketing, fish farmers cooperatives and milk producers’ cooperative. The team visited the poultry farms and Fisheries projects under the private sector initiatives which show cases the complete value chain of these two commodities.

APRACA received a request received from the Directorate of Animal Production, Government of Nepal to organize a learning and exposure visit for their senior officials to Thailand. The overarching objectives of the visit were to provide practical knowledge on the latest and modern practical information on feed manufacturing plant, animal nutrition lab along with the visit and understanding of one farm of each commodity i.e. cattle, sheep, pig, goat and poultry and feeding practices in Thailand. The team from the Directorate was consists of 18 officials form the Directorate.

RACA received a request received from the Central Veterinary Hospital, Government of Nepal to organize a learning and exposure visit for 2 groups of senior officials to Thailand. The Group1 was interested learn on the  Diagnosis, Treatment and Management for pet animals in the relevant institutions and hospitals in Thailand and the Group 2 was interested for an exposure and observation tour on Telemedicine in the relevant institutions in Thailand. There were 10 delegates in the two groups.