The African Development Bank (AfDB) is to invest $24 billion in agriculture over the next 10 years to help unlock its potential and assure food security in Africa. The President of the bank, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, revealed at a side event of the ongoing Borlaug Dialogue International Symposium in Des Moines, Iowa, USA on Wednesday. Adesina said there was need for supportive public policies and significant investments in infrastructure, especially for roads, irrigation, storage, warehousing and agro-processing.
He said that AfDB would provide support to strengthen African agricultural research and development systems to play significant roles in the transformation processes. The former Agriculture Minister said the support was to ensure that valuable research no longer implied gathered dust on the shelves of academia. The president said that AfDB’s Feed Africa strategy had launched the Transformation of the African Savannah Initiatives (TASI) to help unlock the potential of the Savannas of Africa.
He said that the initiative would start by bringing approximately two million hectares of savannah in eight African countries – Ghana, Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia and Mozambique. These countries come under the cultivation of maize, soybean and livestock production in optimum conditions. According to him, the bank has engaged to work with the strongest possible organisations with proven track records in tropical agriculture from South America.
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