ROME – The FAO Intergovernmental Group on Tea has a new officer in charge: Senior Economist, Jean Luc MASTAKI NAMEGABE PhD has replaced Kaison CHANG since start 2017. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation has its headquarters in Rome Italy.
In charge of monitoring the global food supply via the global agriculture the FAO has many divisions.
Jean Luc Mastaki Namegabe (in the PICTURE with Protea President Gabrielle Lombardi) has recently joined FAO and been appointed in the Trade and Markets Division (EST) as the Team Leader for the Raw Materials, Horticulture and Tropical Products (RAMHOT) division.
He is therefore also in charge of the Secretariat of the Intergovernmental Group (IGG) on Tea, taking over from Kaison Chang, who retired end 2016.
Citizen of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Mastaki Namegabe holds a PhD in Rural Economics from the University of Liege, Belgium and a Masters’ Degree in Agricultural Economics from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium.
He carries more than 20 years of experience working on rural and agricultural economies, trade and development policies.
He started his career as a Professor in the Economic Departments in several Universities in the DR Congo and was later on appointed as an Economic Affairs Officer in the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca).
There he worked for more than 12 years, both in the Headquarters , located in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and in the sub regional offices for Southern Africa (Lusaka, Zambia) and West Africa ( Niamey, Niger).
His first informal contact with the representatives of the global tea industry and trade occurred during the 1st International Tea Convention, in Yibin, Sichuan, China, in March of this year.
He was also a prominent guest at the Ceylon Tea 150years Birthday Party which was celebrated at the Sri Lanka Ambassador’s home in Rome on July 6th and where Gabriella Lombardi, President of the Italian Tea Association “Protea “has given the introductory presentation talk.
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He will service the FAO IGG Tea 23rd inter sessional meeting, to take place in Colombo, Sri Lanka in August 2017.
