Pretoria – Delegates from South Africa and the United States met on Wednesday to review the level of cooperation between the two nations across a range of fields including education, agriculture and health.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation hosted the fifth Annual Bilateral Forum (ABF) under the United States-South Africa Strategic Dialogue.
During the day-long forum, officials from across the South African government hosted their counterparts from the US Mission to look into bilateral cooperation in 14 areas, namely: basic and higher education; agriculture; health; protocol and administration; economic development, trade and investment; energy; water; environment; transportation; science and technology; defence, and safety and security.
US Ambassador to South Africa, Patrick Gaspard, co-chaired the forum. He described the ABF as a roadmap for maintaining and growing close cooperation between the United States and South Africa.
He said one of the areas in which the bilateral cooperation has great potential is law enforcement, which has positive spin-offs for the people of both countries.
“Through this mechanism, we have institutionalised broad bilateral dialogue across our many departments and agencies, allowing us to take stock of and make substantive progress on issues that are important to the security and prosperity of both nations,” he said.
Ambassador John Davies, who also chaired the forum, said: “The ABF is a useful engagement for providing an overview of bilateral relations and it definitely helps us to identify areas for potential growth and development, deal with problem areas and plan for the future.
“There are areas where we can clearly work better together and should concentrate in future on them so that our bilateral ties can strengthen to our mutual benefit.”
The ABF is a big component of the US-South Africa Strategic Dialogue, established by Former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton and South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane in 2010. – SAnews.gov.za
