TAIPEI – Prime Minister Russell Mmiso Dlamini arrived in the Republic of China (Taiwan) on Monday evening, representing His Majesty King Mswati III on a visit that places agriculture among the headline items of Eswatini’s oldest and most consequential diplomatic partnership.
Speaking on arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport, the Prime Minister named agriculture alongside health, education, technology, infrastructure and private sector development as sectors in which Taiwan has “contributed meaningfully” to Eswatini’s development journey.
“During my visit, I look forward to productive engagements with President Lai and other leaders of Taiwan as we explore new opportunities to deepen our strategic partnership, expand trade and investment, strengthen technology and innovation cooperation, advance health and agricultural development, and promote skills transfer for sustainable and inclusive economic growth,” the Prime Minister said.
He conveyed His Majesty’s warm greetings and best wishes to President Lai Ching-te and the people of Taiwan, describing the relationship as “a partnership of principle and progress, one that has endured the test of time”.
The Prime Minister is accompanied by the Minister of Labour and Social Security, Hon. Phila Buthelezi; the Minister of Economic Planning and Development, Hon. Dr Tambo Gina; and the Minister of Natural Resources and Energy, Hon. Prince Lonkhokhela. The delegation was received by senior officials of Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The visit is anchored on the Ketagalan Forum, Taiwan’s flagship Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue, which convenes on Tuesday, 05 August 2026 at the Grand Hyatt Taipei. Now in its tenth edition and co-hosted by Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Taiwan Institute of Economic Research, this year’s forum brings together twelve political leaders, lawmakers and experts from nine countries, among them former Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin, former United States House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland. Its agenda covers democratic resilience, collective defence in the Indo-Pacific and the reshaping of global supply chains — the last of these carrying direct implications for how and where African agricultural produce is traded.
What Taiwan already puts into Eswatini’s fields
For the farming community, the substance of this relationship is measured less in communiqués than in seed, soil and training.
The flagship intervention is the Taiwan-Africa Vegetable Initiative (TAVI), a partnership between the Government of the Republic of China (Taiwan), the World Vegetable Center, the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Education and Training. The programme has drawn some E124 million into indigenous vegetable development in Eswatini — E76.5 million in Phase I between 2021 and 2024, E23 million in 2025 and a further E24 million committed in 2026.
Phase I concentrated on nutrition. In its first year of operation, TAVI-supported mobile kitchens reached more than 120,000 emaSwati, while seed kits, school feeding support and “champion farmer” training pushed traditional vegetables back onto household plates. In 2024, the programme expanded the genebank at the Malkerns Research Station, giving the country a conservation base for indigenous varieties that had been quietly disappearing from local production.
Phase II changes the question from what emaSwati eat to what they earn. The focus has shifted to commercial production, with Eswatini positioned as a regional innovation hub for traditional vegetables — a crop category that is drought-tolerant, nutritionally dense and, critically, still under-supplied to formal retail.
Alongside TAVI, the Technical Mission of the Republic of China (Taiwan) in Eswatini, based at Matsapha, continues to run demonstration farming, solar-powered irrigation and extension support, while Taiwan’s International Cooperation and Development Fund (TaiwanICDF) channels scholarships and technical courses to emaSwati agricultural professionals, including a sustainable agriculture programme at the National Pingtung University of Science and Technology.
The diplomatic momentum has been building. In May 2026, President Lai Ching-te travelled to Eswatini — a trip China unsuccessfully sought to block — and toured the Taiwan Industrial Innovation Park, the newly opened International Convention Centre and the Strategic Oil Reserve project, while urging greater Taiwanese private sector investment in the Kingdom.
Eswatini’s agriculture sector is rebuilding from a difficult season, with foot-and-mouth disease controls still shaping the livestock calendar and horticulture producers pressing for reliable offtake and irrigation. A visit that pairs a security forum with an explicit agricultural agenda gives the sector a rare opening: technology transfer, irrigation finance, seed systems and market access are all live items on the table in Taipei this week.
The Prime Minister closed his arrival remarks with a note of confidence that the visit would “open new avenues of cooperation that deliver lasting benefit for present and future generations”.
For the country’s farmers, the test of that sentence will be measured in yields.
