IBADAN – Oyo State governor, Engr. ‘Seyi Makinde, has said that African countries have the capacity to ensure food sufficiency in the world, apart from meeting their local needs. He stated this on Wednesday, during a high-level panel discussion held at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Headquarters, Ibadan, as part of the Presidential Visit Programme in honour of the President, Republic of Sierra Leone, Dr Julius Maada Bio. “I have heard about data where they said Africa is about 1.4 billion people, and so also is India and so is China. So, we should look inwards in terms of food production and food security, but the efforts that we need to take on the whole world is not more than what we need for import substitution. “The real catch is that we must not only be satisfied with meeting our local needs, we have the capacity to also take on the world in terms of solving the global food sufficiency challenge,” Makinde said. While sharing his administration’s experiences on the successful and impactful agribusiness initiatives implemented in Oyo State, the governor said that his administration focused on agribusiness knowing that it could be a major driver of the state’s economy and also help to achieve the vision of taking people from poverty to prosperity and tackling hunger. The governor equally stated that his administration had been deliberate about driving agriculture with technology, innovations and data, saying that the tractorisation policy, which helps farmers with a 50 percent subsidy on ploughing, verification of farmers and input support to smallholders were among the deliberate efforts taken to ensure food security and sufficiency. He said: “When we came in, we took agribusiness as one of the major pillars to expand our economy. We had a workshop and took all the stakeholders to the Republic of Benin, because we didn’t want any distraction. “We put our roadmap together and started tracking it. Few things came up at that workshop, which we believed would work for us. “When we started, we saw those things that worked and vice-versa, that was when we started tackling hunger to break the cycle of poverty among our people in the state. “What has also worked for us is utilising technology to verify the actual data. We went to Israel and saw that they could feed themselves while also exporting, but the entire state of Israel does not have more than 10,000 farmers to do all the fanciful things they are doing all over the world. “We saw that we are a little bit far from the mechanisation programme. We used to have a Tractor Unit in Oyo State and we asked them where the tractors were, but they were nowhere to be found. “So, we concluded that we would not invest money again to purchase tractors but would leave the private people to run it as a business and the private people would look after their business by themselves. “Also, on the other side, we thought of what the state could do to ensure they remained in business and we gave some subsidy to the farmers. We said to them that if you want to clear 10 acres, for instance, you bring half of the money, pay those business people having tractors and the government would pay the other half. “We set a target of ploughing 120,000 hectares but the result came out about a week ago and we only met five per cent of that target. It was bad. But the good news is that now we have real data and we know that if we get up to 30 or 50 per cent, we would have moved somewhere. So, you have that option to either invest in tractors or have a model that the private sector can drive.” Sharing the success story of the Fasola Agribusiness Industrial Hub, which has been designated as Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone by the African Development Bank (AfDB), the governor stated that having taken the decision to allow the private sector to drive agribusiness, the government invested heavily on fixing infrastructure. He explained that the big private sector players in the agribusiness sector in the state chose to do business there because of the government’s commitment to infrastructure. “When we went to Fasola, we observed that there had been efforts in the past to revive the Farm Settlement that failed and we said we would upgrade it to a Farm Estate. But there was a problem. The road leading to Fasola, a 34-kilometre stretch of road belonging to the Federal Government, was in a bad state. “We said the first thing we had to do was to fix the infrastructure so that private businesses could come there. So, we fixed the road. “Former President of the Nigeria Football Federation, Amaju Pinnick, is a very big investor in Fasola Agribusiness Hub now and the only thing that brought him there was the infrastructure we have put in place. “It has worked for us that when you fix the infrastructure, private money will come and today, the investment money we put into the infrastructure, when compared to the investments that have been attracted to Fasola, is almost nothing. So, fixing infrastructure is key.” Governors of Borno and Plateau states, Prof. Babagana Zulum and Caleb Muftwang, also shared their experiences in their respective states. In his remarks, the President of Sierra Leone, Dr Bio said that Africa would not be spending over 50 billion dollars annually to import food if its leaders could leverage their political will, technology and requisite funding to ensure food security on the continent. Dr Bio also commended the efforts of the Oyo State governor and his colleagues for their initiatives to drive the economy of their states through agribusiness and charged them to provide more solutions to agricultural challenges in their various states. After the High-Level Panel Discussion, President Bio and his team; Governor Makinde and his team, Plateau State governor, Mr Caleb Muftwang, and his … Read more
