At the invitation of the Secretary-General of African Asian Rural Development Organization (AARDO), Ambassador Dato’ Ku Jaafar Ku Shaari, D-8 Secretary-General, attended the 19th session of the Executive Committee of the AARDO in Kuala Lumpur. 

As one of the founding members of AARDO and host of the first AARDO conference back in 1964, Malaysia hosted 19th session of the AARDO conference this year. 

Dato’ Sri Ismail Sabri Bin Yaakob, Minister of Rural Regional Development of Malaysia officiated the conference with presence of Ministers and State Ministers from eight AARDO Member countries, in which two were from D-8 Member States, and high level representatives from AARDO Member countries. 

Minister Yaakob said that there were still many people living in poverty and it remained predominantly a rural problem. He referred to Malaysia’s current poverty rate at 1%, an astounding reduction from 58.7% in 1970. The success for the alleviation of poverty was attributed to multifarious efforts made by the government of Malaysia to increase the well-being and income of rural communities. Rural development being one of the top priority agenda for Malaysia, Minister mentioned that Malaysia stood ready to share their experience and knowledge in economic and social development with other developing countries. 

D-8 and the AARDO, back in 2013 in Nigeria signed an institutional arrangement for development cooperation in order to facilitate cooperative partnership.