Conveners of the Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA) have set a target of a $300 million investment pipeline for Africa’s agriculture sector as they bid to connect viable agribusiness opportunities with investors and development finance institutions.

The summit, which hosted over 12,000 participants, sought to translate discussions into deployable capital and, ultimately, double Africa’s agricultural GDP, the organisers said.

The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Sterling Bank, Abubakar Suleiman, stated that closing the gap between the continent’s vast agricultural resources and production potential and its continued import of volumes of food and other goods requires capital, risk-sharing, infrastructure and deliberate ownership of the systems around production.

According to him, the work is to convert conversations into projects, projects into finance, finance into productive capacity, and productive capacity into affordable food.

According to him, over the past 14 years, Sterling has deployed over $500 million to support Nigeria’s agricultural output, with the supported enterprises creating over one million jobs and adding over one million metric tonnes to national agricultural output, among others.

However, Suleiman argued that the deeper challenge is building the financing, risk, processing, infrastructure and market systems required for Nigeria to retain more of the value created by its agriculture.

Also, ASA 2026’s co-convener, Sunbeth Global Concepts, called for a move from producing raw commodities to owning their value. According to the Managing Director, Olasunkanmi Owoyemi, Africa gives away too much of its wealth by exporting crops cheaply and buying them back as finished goods.

Meanwhile, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, insisted that Africa must convert its vast agricultural endowments into economic value if it is to emerge as a global food power.

Noting that conversion, rather than endowment, is power, he lamented that the continent holds about two-thirds of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land but continues to spend over $100 billion annually on food imports.

However, Kyari said the federal government was addressing the gap through the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones programme, which, in its first phase,mobilised $520 million in co-financing with development partners across seven states and the Federal Capital Territory, among other similar initiatives.

He called for greater private-sector investment in processing, storage, logistics and distribution, adding: “Our task in government is to make those investments bankable, not to take your place.”