A signing ceremony of the Memorandum of Understanding under the ‘100 Villages’ program between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, the National Territorial Planning Agency (NTPA), private and public higher education institutions [University of Tirana, the Faculty of Economics; the Polytechnic University; Agricultural University of Tirana; Epoka University, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning; Polis University, Faculty of Architecture and Designing, Faculty of Planning, Environment and Urban Management; Catholic University “Our Lady of Good Counsel”; the Faculty of Applied Sciences, Economics, Politics and Social Sciences] took place at the Maps Hall at the Prime Minister’s office.

Prime Minister Edi Rama’s remarks at the signing ceremony:

Greetings everyone!

Thank you for attending the ceremony!

The signing of this Memorandum of Understanding with the aforesaid universities represents a major step towards establishing an interaction network between the state institutions, ministries and agencies involved in the Rural Renaissance Program, as well as university professors and students who will bring great power and a significant added value to the process which should be quick, profound and accurate.

I am pretty confident that the direct outcome of the Urban Renaissance Program, which has led to an increased trade and entrepreneurship activity and a significant growth in number of visitors to all areas the project has been implemented to date, is a meaningful example of what we are about to witness also thanks to the Rural Renaissance Program in a very near future. The idea is not only to upgrade and improve these 100 villages and not to invest everything in these 100 villages, since there are thousands of other villages across rural Albania, but we are seeking to turn this 100 villages into genuine tourist destinations and give a strong impetus to the economic and social development and reveal great potential of these areas where development of large-scale agriculture is impossible.

We strongly believe that tourism and agritourism in particular, a mechanism to attract people to the countryside which is home to exceptional natural beauty, rich historic and cultural heritage, is an extremely efficient and untapped instrument to lift people out poverty and encourage emigrants to turn head to their birthplace and invest in projects that generate income and create a chain reaction which, just like the acupuncture, would release energy not just where we are touching it but all around the space.

During their old and modern history, the Albanians have demonstrated more than once their ability to adapt, the ability to follow the thread of their imagination, referring to the tangible examples and models of success stories they have set around the world. This is precisely the objective; to create concrete examples of success and open the people’s eyes to see what they don’t see what lies around for 1001 reasons, which are primarily linked to the short-sighted rural policies over decades, but which are also related to a social uneasy context.

We have had a previous experience of cooperation on the funding schemes between the Agricultural University and the Agricultural and Rural Development Agency. A first experiences full of shortcomings and deficiencies since it was the first experience ever yet an effective one that deserves to further develop in the years to come. We are finally establishing cooperation between the government and the academic world on exploring ways to promote the agricultural and rural development and create new opportunities for today’s students to become protagonists of the development in the future and see their professional life not necessarily linked with e government job, but a private activity. And we are of course making use of experience and expertise of many university professors who are offered ample and unlimited opportunities to serve our concrete life experience by merging and combining auditorium with the reality, creating at the same time more opportunities to become part of a network of consultancies.

I believe we will soon see the initial results of the program, in which we have included all Albania’s friends and partners through their diplomatic missions in Tirana, as well as other international development agencies by presenting them the ‘100 Villages’ project and asking them to share forces and synthetize efforts in all aspects, from the funding for water supply systems to providing funding to small entrepreneurship activities so that every single penny injected in the Albanian economy or communities thanks to international cooperation become part of a symphonic plan and not of a fragmented, uncoordinated and disoriented plan it used to be over decades.

I would like to especially thank the National Program Coordinator and the National Planning Agency’s Director for their effort to bring these things together. The Ministry of Agriculture is the lead ministry in this process. The other three ministries are part of this process. The entire government is focused on this process.

I am also grateful to all the high-level university representatives, being convinced that we can learn from each other and, above all, together we can deliver a product that will be an added value to the economy, an added value in strengthening social cohesion in areas where social cohesion seems impossible today and an added value in Albania’s tourist map. Albania has a tapped seaside tourism map, a tapped culture, heritage and historical tourism segment, a partially developed mountain tourism in northern Albania, while we have an endless space with tremendous potential and totally untapped tourism potential across the rest of the country.

I am pretty confident that the more we expand and diversify Albania’s tourism map the more and more households and communities will soon realize that our main barrier is not wealth but lack of knowledge. We do not lack wealth but the path to knowledge. This academy represents a new path which will be made available to people and ordinary families and help everyone learn not only how to make the application for funding to support farming and agricultural development better, faster and successfully, not only how to apply in order to transform his own private home into a guesthouse or develop an agritourism business, but how to see and build his own future in the land of his ancestors.

I am fully confident that the program will mark a remarkable and significant turnaround in the relationship between Albanian immigrants who have left their homeland and who now work in Greece, Italy or elsewhere and their village, not as nostalgic, not as an obligation to bringing some money every month to help parents or relatives back home, but as a lucrative instrument as an instrument where everyone who invests will earn them a higher profit rate rather than they would earn from the daily work as emigrant.

Thank you very much!