Prime Minister Edi Rama, together with the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Andis Salla, took part today in the International Conference on Life Sciences and Agriculture, organized at the premises of the Agricultural University of Tirana. The conference, which brought together experts from Albania and various countries around the world, focused on scientific cooperation for the development of sustainable agriculture that respects nature and strengthens the rural economy.
In his address, Prime Minister Rama praised the transformation of the Agricultural University into a modern institution that is building bridges of international cooperation with universities such as BOKU of Vienna, turning it into a regional center of excellence and innovation. He emphasized the importance of investing in scientific knowledge as a prerequisite for the sustainable development of agriculture and the preservation of the country’s natural resources.
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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Greetings to everyone, and welcome to all our guests from abroad who have come to take part in this conference, which is deeply meaningful as it takes place in an atmosphere of transformation at the Agricultural University of Tirana.
I would just like to take a brief moment to look back before I briefly address a few important points for today and for tomorrow.
The retrospective moment is when the Rector of the University approached me with a sense of urgency, even panic, I would say due to the decline in the number of students and the necessity of ensuring that the University would not be left without students. He practically asked me to support the idea of further lowering the admission average for this University. In other words, moving in a direction that might bring more people to this territory so vital for the country’s development, but which would completely compromise the quality of human resources available for development in such an essential sector as agriculture and in a field as complex as rural development.
I told the Rector that we must go in the opposite direction, we must aim to give the University a mark of excellence and make it attractive by inspiring young women and men who want to open the horizon of higher education for themselves, through a new opportunity, one that gives them the strength of knowledge to be valuable to the country, but also to be valuable anywhere else they may wish to test themselves.
And so, we had the idea to go together with the Minister at that time, the Vice-Rector, and a group as a delegation to the doors of BOKU University, where we met today’s birthday man, Hubert, for whom Bardhi and I are still competing over who loves him more. I always remember that moment because Hubert was genuinely surprised and a bit pale in the face when he saw the Prime Minister of a country together with the Rector of the Agricultural University showing up at his door. As he himself said, it was the first time in over a hundred years of the university’s existence that a Prime Minister had ever come to its doorstep.
And that is how cooperation began, which today has brought about an atmosphere of optimism. Even though this is only the beginning, the result has been a 20% increase in the number of students at the Agricultural University not students admitted through lower grades to fill the seats, but students who themselves have knocked on the doors of the university because this institution has opened a new horizon for today’s young men and women. It has created conditions for them to see their future in this field, which, regardless of the extraordinary technological developments and the professions that have been most desired until now, it will actually increasingly become such a vital area that the value of people working in it will only continue to grow, including the financial terms.
The major issues covered by the programs of the Agricultural University, in alliance with BOKU University of Vienna as reflected in the list of joint programs we saw here are issues of the survival of nations, at a time when climate change, the need to manage natural resources intelligently, and other similar challenges are becoming sharper and ever more demanding.
The issue of food sovereignty and the guarantee of food security, precisely under the conditions of these increasingly catastrophic changes, as well as the issue of protecting and renewing natural resources, considering for example fires, are all part of a broader theme that makes professionals in this field invaluable and ever more essential over time. The fact that the Agricultural University today, under the wise and thoughtful leadership of Hubert together with the rector and his team, has managed to carry out a reform that serves not only the Agricultural University itself but also opens a window for our entire academic world.
I am genuinely pleased that an institution which once lived through a process of continuous decline, a result of turning its back on the very topics it was meant to address, and which at the start of our cooperation was both attacked and practically strangled by an entire network of metastases from the cancer of illegal construction within its own premises, has now been transformed into a vanguard. A vanguard of transformation, a vanguard of ambition for the Albania of tomorrow, a vanguard of high responsibility before the generation knocking on the doors of our universities to become the specialists of the future.
Therefore, being fully confident that this very promising beginning is in fact a guarantee for a path that will be paved step by step with the contribution of all and that will lead to the blessed day when the Agricultural University of Tirana will be fully aligned with BOKU University of Vienna, issuing joint degrees and realizing our shared socialist and democratic vision with Bardhi, I am convinced that this university will become a regional center attracting students not only from Albania but from across the region. I am also confident that the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, who despite coming from a reality that is not well known or much covered in the media, holds this position as a result of many innovative efforts he has made, working with farmers and engaging directly with the challenges of rural development, will continue to make a real difference.
And finally, not long ago, we sought the assistance of the Agricultural University to carry out an assessment of the capacities of the National Food Agency. It was not only a very useful experience, and we received a high-quality report from the group engaged here, but it also gave us the idea to structure this as an extended collaboration with the academic world, to conduct professional evaluations of all the inspectorates in our country. Through this alliance, we will open the way for professionals who wish to join these inspectorates based on merit, and at the same time, we will close the way to those who have found ways to enter these institutions without the necessary professional integrity, becoming not part of the solution that inspectorates are supposed to guarantee, but part of the very problem we face with them.
Therefore, I would also like to thank all the professors who have taken part in this process, and I want to invite all students who would like to become involved in these inspectorates in the future, or those who have graduated from the Agricultural University and wish to contribute to the National Food Agency, to have the courage to do so.
Now, according to tradition, we must also express our gratitude to the partners present here through the Ambassador of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Austrian Ambassador, who understands Albanian even though she wears those headphones, and of course, once again, to all those who made the journey to come here today.
At the same time, a very special thanks must go to the President of the Academy of Sciences, Professor Skënder Gjinushi, who has given the Academy a new spirit and has once again proven that “old wine,” when it is good and well preserved, is truly incomparable. I want to encourage this university and all universities to work as closely as possible with the Academy of Sciences.
Today we know very well what Albania 2030 will bring for all the professors and students of this university, and thanks to this university, also for agriculture and the overall dynamics of rural development.
Thank you very much.
