AfDB mission on transforming agric-business in review
The new Development Effectiveness Review on Agriculture business, showed that the African Development Bank (AfDB) has deployed $5.5 billion in investments in the agriculture sector over five years to 2015,
According to the review, the bank trained three million people on better farming practices, put 20,000 food marketing and storage into use, constructed four thousand kilometres of feeder roads, offered 150,000 microcredit loans, irrigated and built other water systems on 181,000 hectares of farmland.
“The Development Effectiveness Review is mission accomplished, as the AfDB sets out an even more ambitious agenda in its Feed Africa strategy to end hunger and extreme poverty by 2025”, said Simon Mizrahi, Director of Quality Assurance and Results Department that authored the Development Effectiveness Review on Agriculture.
The Review details the progress and the pitfalls to date in transforming Africa’s agriculture sector, and lays out what steps must be taken to catapult Africa into becoming a global agricultural powerhouse in the next decade.
In recent years, agriculture has zoomed to the top of Africa’s policy agenda, with African countries pledging to eradicate hunger and halve post-harvest losses in under a decade.
It has become increasingly clear that “investing in agriculture is the best way to end hunger, malnutrition, and extreme poverty in Africa,” the development report states.
Given that seven out of 10 Africans earn a living from the land, agriculture can create economic growth spread more evenly across society, and extending deeper into rural areas, and helping more women, who make up 70 percent of farmers.
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