SAN FRANCISCO, December 05, (THEWILL) – Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, President, African Development Bank (AfDB), has disclosed plans to launch $800 million scheme to support the agriculture sector in Nigeria..
The AfDB president made this known on Monday at the opening of the African Economic Conference (ACE) organised by the bank in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), in Abuja.
He revealed that the support is on the platform of the AfDB’s initiative called Technology for African Agriculture Transformation (TAAT) which is part of the bank’s efforts to designed and encourage technological innovation in the sector.
He said the scheme, when implemented, would reach 40 million farmers in one year adding that another $24 billion would be used to support Nigeria’s agricultural sector to fight hunger and post-harvest loses.
“To take new agricultural technologies to scale, we are launching $800m initiative known as TAAT,” he revealed.
“It has a goal of reaching over 40 million farmers in 10 years. We must equally reduce the food system losses along the value-chain from the farm, transport, storage, processing and marketing.
“It is important to seek innovative approach to solving finance challenges. When I was the Nigerian agriculture minister, we started NIRSAL which increased lending to farmers by six per cent.
“To drive agro-industrialisation, the role of finance is key so we are investing $24 billion into agriculture in the next 20 years.”
He identified poor infrastructure and access to finance as major challenges, stressing that it became imperative to develop the Staple Crops Processing Zones (SCPZ) urging African nations to invest in the SCPZ in order to create jobs, stressing needs to support private agro-allied firms through incentives and infrastructure.
In his remarks, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh denied claims that the nation would face famine by 2017 declaring that the Federal Government already mapped out plans to support dry-season farming that would discourage the presumed food shortage.
Story by Oputah David
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