$30 Billion has been pledged: By the African Development Bank and Development Partners to Finance Food and Farming in the Next Five Years

By Abdul Rahman Bangura–

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS (NADN) Freetown, Sierra Leone- The Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit ended on Friday with a $30 billion pledge by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and development partners to finance food and agribusiness on the continent in the next five years. Of the amount announced at the summit held in the Senegalese capital, the AfDB pledged to mobilized billion.

Executives that visited the event of The Dakar 2 Feed Africa Summit finished on Friday, January 27th, 2023 called on the African Uno Commission and the AfDB to demobilize additional allotment to add the amount disclosed and account for the comprehensive interest at the February African Union Summit.

Smattering 34 African Heads of State and administration, administrators of global and bilateral development organizations, and the private sector followed the Summit, whose theme was “Feed Africa: Food Sovereignty and Resilience”.

Worried that soaring food prices and tumult in universal food supply due to Covid-19, climate change, and the war in Ukraine will exacerbate food insecurity in Africa, and noting that the mainland has 65% of the world’s prevailing boorish arable land — with the capacity to generate sufficient to provide its people and the rest of the world — the leaders national food and agribusiness delivery cuts to ingrain food targets in their progress agenda.

Amongst the resolutions was the establishment of Presidential Delivery Councils to oversee the implementation of the country-specific compacts and promote accountability.

Dr. Akinwumi Adesina – the African Development Bank President asserted that Africa’s farming sector will rely on robust political will and agreement of governments, development partners, and the private sector and the scaling up of highly impactful continental programs like the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation.

He emphasized of infrastructure in transforming rural areas into agrarian output and processing zones.

“Infrastructure is very important and Africa has a deficit of $68 billion to $108 billion per year. The African Development Bank has in the past six years invested $44 billion in infrastructure: from power to roads, to water, to sanitation, to digital infrastructure, to transport corridors to one-stop border posts. But a lot of infrastructure in Africa concentrates in urban areas, because the economic viability of infrastructure is low in the rural areas, because their a source of livelihood — agriculture — is not viable. But we have special agro-industrial processing zones. These are going to change the density of infrastructure in rural areas around agriculture, power water, roads, irrigation storage, logistics.

“It will make agricultural processing and value addition profitable, close to where the food is produced. So, you don’t need to move raw materials; you will move finished agricultural products.”

He told the Bank has in the past two years invested $1 billion on twenty-three projects on outstanding agro-industrial processing zones in eleven nations. Parties pursued assistance for agriculture-based small and medium enterprises (SMEs), loaded with an unmet financing desire of about $100 billion yearly.

The AfDB and the administration of Canada declared openly the Agri-SME Catalytic Financing Mechanism, an amalgamated finance structure that is anticipated to de-risk enterprise into small and medium agri-businesses and strengthen food systems across the landmass.

With a preliminary donation of $85 million from the Canadian administration, the Mechanism will give concessional finance and technical subsidy to financial mediators, comprising agribusinesses, commercial banks, micro-finance institutions and impact funds.

The summit also saw the blastoff of the Mission 1 for 200, a joint programme of the AfDB and the International Fund for Agricultural Development to enable forty million African growers to generate 100 million tones of food for 200 million people. Mission 1 for 200 is implied to create stability by assisting planters adapt to climate change and lessen husbandry’s environmental impact and emissions.

For New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports,  Africa Correspondent