As Africa moves to ease away from the negative impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, its leaders have jointly committed to prioritize food security to fight off hunger in the continent.
This was part of the resolutions reached on Thursday at the commencement of the two-day High Level Dialogue on Feeding Africa 2021 organized by the African Development Bank, AfDB.
Speaking, AfDB President, Akinwumi Adeshina observed that the time has come for a global alliance “to have funds and facilities for food security and nutrition in Africa to take what we know exist goes to scale”.
While noting that Covid19 has wreaked much havoc on the continent with major impact on food security, he said “to fully recover from this pandemic, Africa must now rapidly upscale efforts to boost food production. Without food medicines don’t work. Without nutrition vaccines are simply not effective”.
He lamented that Africa has up to 60 percent fertile land for agriculture, but is still struggling to feed itself, adding that at least $10bn should be invested in the sector over the next five years.
Also, Nigeria’s Vice President Yemi Osinbajo restated the Nigerian Government’s commitment to providing food security to Nigerians, insisted that the future must involve making agriculture cool and attractive to attract young people.
According to Osinbajo, the Nigerian government as parts of efforts to ensure food security and sustainability, created an Agriculture for Food and Job Plan, Agriculture Transformation Agenda, as well as Green Alternative.
He added that the government has collaborated with several fintech companies and agro tech start-up to enable easy access to loans, equipment and other accessories needed by farmers.
He said over a million “farmers have so far been registered into the scheme which has about 8,000 local government wards and over 7,000 local government areas linked to the agro app. 6 million farmers have been linked to their farm lands and over 200 million more are to be properly linked. The budget for the Agriculture for food and job plan is $1.5bn”.
On the agricultural transformation agenda, the VP stated that it was aimed at transitioning farmers and herders from “primitive to modern ranching to settle crop farmers and cattle herder crisis”.
Osinbajo further added that the government would partner state government, Islamic Bank of Nigeria, private institutions as well as the Netherlands and Brazil government to achieve its green alternative and agricultural transformation agenda.
On his part, the Rwanda President Paul Kagame, stated that the African continent must look within for solutions to the food security issues facing the continent.
“Solutions to the challenges are known and within our means. Agric business can be a pathway for African Families to escape poverty.
“Just like smartphones, we need to tap into partnership with private institutions to produce more food.
“As African countries we need to partner with each other, as it widens opportunities for better productions,” he noted.
