By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Nigeria and Brazil on Tuesday signed a $1 billion agreement aimed at boosting agriculture, food security, energy, and defence in the West African nation.
The deal, announced by Nigeria’s Vice President, Kasim Shettima, was signed in Abuja during the visit of Brazilian Vice President, Geraldo Alckmin, to Africa’s most populous nation.
Under the deal, both nations are seeking to “deploy over $1 billion to deliver mechanised farming equipment, training, and service centres across Nigeria,” Shettima said in a statement posted on X.
“We are moving from subsistence to scale in agriculture, and in energy, we are taking long-overdue steps to attract serious investment into gas production, refining, and renewables,” Shettima, a former governor of the North-Eastern state of Borno, added.
He told his Brazilian counterpart that reforms embarked upon by President Bola Tinubu have helped reshape Nigeria’s economy.
Nigeria has set an ambitious $1 trillion economy by 2030, hoping to reap results from reforms in agriculture, energy, education, and public finance.
Central Bank of Nigeria has initiated reforms to get banks to recapitalise, aiming to attract foreign investments.
Tinubu on Monday commissioned 2,000 tractors in Abuja, to boost agriculture and food security.
Subsistence farming is popular in Nigeria, where land ownership is largely in the hands of individuals and families, making large-scale acquisition difficult.
Despite its large expanse of land, Nigeria heavily relies on imports to feed its over 200 million population.
