Devt Partners To Spend $500m In Agriculture Sector 

N an effort to improve food and nutritional security in the country, development partners, including European Union, United Kingdom, Japan, France, Germany and US have committed $500million to the sector between 2013-2016

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Arc. Sonny Echono disclosed this during a workshop on Public Validation of the Annual Progress Report on the New Alliance and Grow Africa Agreement, with the theme, “Promoting Agricultural Investment in Nigeria”.

He said Nigeria’s commitment to the New Alliance Cooperative Agreement Framework and grows Africa since 2013 had attracted investments of about $4billion into the sector, both from the international and local business establishment firms.

Echono explained that Nigeria had formed an alliance in 2013, wherein, government, private sector and development patners made written commitments on key actions to be embarked upon in order to improve agricultural investment, food and nutritional security in line with the principles of the Comprehensive African Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).

To this end, under the new alliance agreement, government committed itself to 13 major policy actions in the areas of seed and fertilizer, Bank of Agriculture, agricultural insurance, nutrition, land titling, staple crops processing zones, commodity exchange, enterprise registration and power availability.

The partnership, he maintained, is expected to attract more private investment into the sector as government implements the 13 policy actions, which improve the environment for investment, adding that an annual report on the level of implementation of stakeholders’ commitments will be produced at the national level and at continental (African Union) level.

Earlier in his remarks, the Director Planning and Policy Coordination, Edide Adamu explained that the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition is a partnership that brings together the capacities and interests of diverse stakeholders, comprising of development partners, African governments, institutions, private sector and civil society to address key constraints to an inclusive agriculture-led growth in Africa.

She highlighted the founding development partners to include Canada, European Union, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom and US, while the ten African governments that initially joined the initiative were Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ehiopia, Ghana, Malawi, Mozambique, Nigeria, Senegal and Tanzania.