Africa has been described in poetry as a nation with streams of milk and lakes of honey, but beyond the metaphor lies the ironical story of an untapped potential.
“Africa can feed the world” may sound like an overstatement, but a trip down the beautiful land of greenery and fertile soils that await cultivation establish the fact as undisputable. Therefore it’s high time entrepreneurs dive in to this stream of billion dollars worth of opportunity and recreate the Africa’s agro-industry. Jamal Saghil, worldbank director for sustainable development in the Africa region said
“Improving Africa’s agriculture and agribusiness sectors means higher incomes and more jobs. It also allows Africa to compete globally. Today, Brazil, Indonesia and Thailand each export more food products than all of sub-Saharan Africa combined. This must change,” A lot needs to change, Africa spends a whooping $33bn on rice importation yearly, despite having enough land and resources that could cater for the rice need of the whole of Asia( the largest consumer of rice in the world).
We all have a role to play in transforming agriculture in Africa, the youth particularly need to get out of that cocoon of blame game, and open their eyes to innovations that will help drive their agribusiness, research and update their knowledge time to time as, the most accessible, yet scarce resources in this technological era is information. “We need to do the research to produce the right solutions to the issues we might face along the value chain. Youth are particularly involved in this aspect as they know how to develop tools addressing issues such as water management and release”, said Aliko Dangote at a round table discussion of the Africa Investment forum of the Africa Development Bank.
With 65% of the world’s uncultivated land, Africa sure has the capacity, manpower, creativity and resources to feed the world’s 7 billion population.
Agroworld 