Mrs. Fatou SOCK is an engineer in agricultural and agri-food industries, with additional training in project management. She is a graduate of prestigious institutions, including ONIRIS (National Veterinary School, Agri-food, and Alimentation of Nantes, France) and the Institute of Business Administration (IAE) at the University of Nantes, France.
She worked for 4 years at the Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Economy (MPEM) in Senegal, serving as a civil servant responsible for managing projects to improve the quality of exported fishery products. She worked at the Directorate of Fish Processing Industries (DITP), the Competent Authority in charge of managing Approval with the European Union (EU) for the export of fishery products. From 2009, Mrs. Sock became a consultant in Food Safety and worked on several projects, including the "Better Training for Safer Food-Africa," a joint initiative of the African Union (AU) and the EU aimed at strengthening intra-regional trade and exports to the EU market.
For several years, she provided training to officials responsible for the control of food products and operators in the agricultural and agri-food sector to ensure compliance with European Union standards in the five regions comprising AU member states. She also provided technical assistance to several agri-food companies, particularly in Côte d'Ivoire, Mauritius, and Cabo Verde, to enhance the quality of their production.
Since 2015, she has been working for the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), initially as a national expert at the FAO Representation in Senegal and for the past 4 years at the FAO in Rome as a fisheries officer and coordinator of the "Coastal Fisheries Initiative" (IPC) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).