To grow agriculture sector to the projected $1trillion market in 10 years, African nations should come together and proffer solutions to its numerous challenges.
And as part of efforts to achieve this, Sterling Bank Plc said, having identified Agriculture as its priority sector, it is committed to organise an annual agriculture summit to bring together key stakeholders, investors and big players to proffer effective solutions.
According to the duo of Mrs Bukola Awosanya, its Group Head, Agriculture Finance & Export, and Mr Yemi Odubiyi, the Executive Director, Corporate & Investment Banking, who briefed the press Tuesday in Lagos, the summit would bring all actors in the sector together for deliberations, panel discussions and policy engagements that would drive growth in the sector.
“The maiden edition of the Sterling Agriculture Summit held in 2018 was themed Co-Creating a Sustainable Nigerian Economy through Rural Agricultural Enterprise. In 2019, the scope has expanded to be the ‘Agriculture: Your Piece of the Trillion-Dollar Economy scheduled for September 5-6 in Abuja,” said Mrs Awosanya.
Quoting the Vice President of the World Bank for African Region, Makhtar Diop, who called on governments to work side-by-side with agribusiness to link farmers with consumers in an increasingly urbanised Africa, Mrs Awosanya explained that the growth of the sector would help increase exports and income levels, create employment, reduce poverty, boost growth rates and promote food self sufficiency across the continent while concurrently safeguarding the environment.
“However, the sector still has major constraints which include poor infrastructure, low investment in the sector, unstable prices and other environmental issues. These challenges are enormous and require a wholistic approach in addressing them to ensure the projection becomes a reality by 2030.”
Shedding more light on the objectives of the summit, Odubiyi stated that the Summit has four key objectives among which is to showcase agricultural transformation trajectory.