The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced plans to support Nigeria’s Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) with $540 million.
Kano, Kaduna, Oyo, Ogun, Kwara, Imo, Cross River and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) are the seven states to benefit from the agricultural fund.
It is understood that the special agro-Industrial project in Nigeria is part of the AfDB’s quest to achieve food security and scale agribusiness value chain in the country.
Between January and March 2021, agriculture contributed to 22.35 percent of Nigeria’s total Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
Despite the contribution to the economy, Nigeria’s agricultural sector faces many challenges which impact on its productivity.
The challenges include poor land tenure system, low level of irrigation farming, climate change and land degradation.
Others are low technology, high production cost and poor distribution of inputs, limited financing, high post-harvest losses and poor access to markets.
‘I had a wonderful meeting with President [Muhammadu Buhari] on African Development Bank’s plan to support Nigeria with an emergency food production programme’, AfDB’s President, Akinwumi Adesina, said in a tweet.
‘The programme will support six million Nigerian farmers to produce 9.5 million metric tonnes of food, and tackle inflation.’
‘We have decided to mobilise $540 million for the programme. [AfDB] has approved a total of $210 million. The Islamic Development Bank and [the Islamic Development Bank] have approved $170 million, and $160 million respectively, towards the programme.
‘I look forward, Your Excellency, to your formal launch of these Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones, very soon’.
The federal and state governments in Nigeria have expressed support for the programme.
The public-private partnership initiative aims to develop priority value chains in the country through developing infrastructure in rural areas.
Available data shows that Nigerian women account for 75 percent of the farming population in the country, as they work as farm managers and suppliers of labour.
Data from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) also shows that agriculture remains the largest sector in Nigeria, contributing an average of 24 percent to the nation’s GDP over the past seven years (2013–2019) and employing more than 36 percent of the country’s labour force.
However, since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the food security crisis in Nigeria has worsened, with over 8.7 million people facing hunger in the country’s northeast subregion alone.
The already fragile value chains, including people’s ability to produce, process and distribute food items were significantly disrupted by the pandemic, sending negative shocks and impacts on the livelihoods of those most vulnerable, especially women and youths.
Photo source: CIAT
