INTELLIGENT BRANDS // Green Technology
African Development Bank
President calls for technology
to be transfered to farmers
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T
he President of the African
Development Bank Group has made
an urgent call to give farmers across
the continent new technologies with the
potential to transform agricultural production.
Akinwumi Adesina said the technology
transfer was needed immediately and
that evidence from countries like Nigeria
demonstrated that technology and strong
government backing was already yielding
positive results.
“Technologies to achieve Africa’s green
revolution exist, but are mostly just sitting
on the shelves,” he said during a keynote
speech delivered at the 2018 Agricultural
and Applied Economics Association (AAEA)
Annual Meeting held in Washington, D.C.
“The challenge is a lack of supportive policies
to ensure that they are scaled up to reach
millions of farmers.”
Adesina cited the case of Nigeria, where
policy during his tenure as the country’s
Minister of Agriculture, resulted in a rice
production revolution in three years.
“All it took was sheer political will, supported
by science, technology and pragmatic
policies,” said Adesina.
“Just like in the case of rice, the same
can be said of a myriad of technologies,
including high-yielding water efficient maize,
high-yielding cassava varieties, animal and
fisheries technologies.”
The African Development Bank is pointing
the way to how this can be done, and is
currently working with the World Bank,
the Alliance for a Green Revolution in
Africa (AGRA) and the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation to mobilize US$ 1
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billion to scale up agricultural technologies
across Africa under a new initiative called
Technologies for African Agricultural
Transformation (TAAT).
TAAT is taking bold steps to bring down
some of the barriers preventing farmers
from accessing latest seed varieties and
technologies to improve their productivity.
“With the rapid pace of growth of the use
of drones, automated tractors, artificial
Intelligence, Robotics and Blockchains,
agriculture as we know it today will change,”
said Adesina. “It is more likely that the
future farmers will be sitting in their homes
with computer applications using drone to
determine the size of their farms, monitor
and guide the applications of farm inputs,
and with driverless combine harvesters
bringing in the harvest.”
Adesina used the opportunity to advocate
for African universities to adapt their
curriculum to enable technology-driven
farmers and to focus on agribusiness
entrepreneurship for young people,
emphasizing the need to rise beyond
theories to application.
Through its innovative Enable Youth
initiative, the African Development Bank
has in the past two years committed close
to US$ 300 million to develop the next
generation of agribusiness and commercial
farmers for Africa. Adesina stressed the
Bank’s resolve to change the face of
agriculture in Africa to unleash new sources
of wealth.
AAEA President Scott Swinton said
Adesina and the African Development
Bank exemplify the use of economics that
makes a difference in people’s lives. “If
applied economics is economics that make
a difference, I think that there is no better
example of someone who has used that
than Akinwumi Adesina,” Swinedon said.
Adesina told the 1,600 delegates that
attended the 2018 conference that: “There
is no reason why Africa should be spending
US$ 35 billion a year importing food. All
it needs to do is to harness the available
technologies with the right policies and
rapidly raise agricultural productivity and
incomes for farmers, and assure lower food
prices for consumers,” he said.
Adesina, who won the 2017 World Food
Prize, is advocating for the creation of staple
crops processing zones across Africa (SCPZs)
vast areas within rural areas set aside
and managed for agribusiness and food
manufacturing industries and other agro-
allied industries, enabled with right policies
and infrastructure.
“I am convinced that just like industrial
parks helped China, so will the SCPZs help
to create new economic zones in rural areas
that will help lift hundreds of millions out
of poverty through the transformation
of agriculture – the main source of their
livelihoods – from a way of life into a viable
profitable business that will unleash new
sources of wealth,” he said.
The African Development Bank has already
begun investing in the development
of processing zones in a number of
African countries, including Ethiopia,
Togo, Democratic Republic of Congo and
Mozambique, with a plan to reach 15
countries in a few years.
To help Africa transform its agriculture, the
Bank is investing US$ 24 billion over
the next ten years to implement its Feed
Africa Strategy. n
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