AfDB pledges $210m to unlock Nigeria’s agribusiness potential
By Felicia Nwosu
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has pledged the sum of $210m to harness and unlock Nigeria’s agricultural potential. Akinwumi Adesina, President, AfDB, disclosed this while delivering a virtual address at the inauguration of the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) programme in Abuja.
According to the AfDB boss, more needed to be done to promote and support the agribusiness sector in the country.
“Transforming agriculture must start with recognising that agriculture is a business, a wealth-creating sector, not just a way of life. Unlocking wealth in agriculture requires the provision of appropriate technologies to boost productivity, development of agricultural value chains, financial structure to support agricultural value chains, and investments in infrastructure to unlock investments in food and agribusinesses.”
The AfDB President explained further that AfDB has launched the development of SAPZ; which are new economic zones, located in rural areas, to be fully supported by infrastructure (power, water, roads, digital infrastructure, and logistics) that will allow food and agribusiness companies to locate within such zones.
“This will put them close to farmers in production catchment areas, provide market offtakes for farmers, support processing and value addition, reduce food losses, and allow the emergence of highly competitive food and agricultural value chains, he said.
Adesina revealed that the birth of the SAPZs has been a dream he conceived while still the Minister of Agriculture in Nigeria, emphasising the need for diversification of the economy by turning agriculture into a wealth-creating sector with highly competitive agricultural value chains.
“Today, the AfDB is investing over $1 billion in SAPZs in 18 African countries; the SAPZs will help to transform the food and agriculture sector. They will attract private agribusinesses to locate in infrastructure-enabled rural areas; they will create massive amounts of jobs across agricultural value chains,’’ he added.
Meanwhile, Zainab Ahmed, minister of finance, budget and national planning, reaffirmed that it was part of the plans of the present administration to resuscitate the vigour of having agro-processing zones in Nigeria.
She said SAPZ was aimed at promoting the agriculture value-chain, empowering youths and revitalising non-functional investments in agriculture and curtailing the level of importation of products that could be locally produced in the country.
Ahmed said that the first phase of the SAPZ programme will kick-start with a credit facility of $410 million already secured from co-financing development partners – AfDB, IsDB and IFAD.
SAPZ programme, inaugurated by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, is a government-enabled and private sector-led initiative to mobilise private sector investment to develop value chains for selected strategic crops and livestock in participating states.
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