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Sierra Leone Ambassador Waleed Shamsid-Deen, a 1994 graduate of FAMU, visited campus last week to discuss strategic partnership opportunities between the country and FAMU’s College of Agriculture & Food Sciences (CAFS).
Shamsid-Deen was appointed in December as Sierra Leone’s special envoy and ambassador for foreign direct investment to promote trade and investment in West Africa. His campus visit developed following a meeting with FAMU Trustee Tommy Dortch in Atlanta. He is a former member of the FAMU Marching “100” Band, and his daughter has been admitted as a science scholar this fall.
“The intent is to identify delegations to come over to create study abroad programs to promote knowledge transfer and to build the bridge between Africans in the diaspora and African Americans here in the United States,” said Shamsid-Deen, founder of Supreme Foods Worldwide, an Atlanta-based franchise corporation.
“We’re really excited to promote this relationship, build bridges and create opportunities for the next generation of global leaders, entrepreneurs, and those in academia,” he added. “I look forward to this opportunity.”
“This is a relationship we are really going to cherish because we want to have a footprint in many countries,” Agriculture Dean Robert Taylor said. “We have to train our brothers in those countries and use the technology and all of the knowledge that we have and share it with them. It is a two-way street, because they have a lot of talent there too.”
Taylor said the stakes are high when it comes to global food security.“By 2050, we’re going to have 10 billion people in the world and Africa is going to be really very important when it comes to food production,” Taylor said. “We want to be a part of laying the foundation for that.”