Africa-Press – Cape verde. Africa’s push for food sovereignty and resilience depends on investment and partnerships, African Development Bank Group (AfDB) president Akinwumi Adesina said at the Dakar 2 Summit in Senegal.
Speaking during a panel discussion on ‘Building multilateral partnerships and financing support’, on Wednesday, Adesina outlined how the bank was using technology to spur agricultural productivity in various African countries.
“Today we have the technologies to feed Africa; We need to put them into the hands of the farmers. The technologies are working and we have to deliver them at scale,” Adesina told the panel, moderated by Daouda Sembene, the CEO of Africatalyst, a global development advisory firm.
The panel discussion was part of the three-day Dakar 2 Summit which was opened on Wednesday by Senegalese president Macky Sall. His government is co-hosting the summit together with the AfDB.
Adesina repeated his five priority objectives, including Feed Africa, when he first assumed the bank’s leadership role. “Since then, more than 250 million people across the continent have benefitted from the bank’s investments, projects and programmes, driven mainly by technology,” he said.
Adesina highlighted the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation, which he said had significantly increased wheat yields in Ethiopia and Sudan. The bank is rolling out Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones which are designed to transform Africa’s agricultural sector.
“We’re going to build on these to boost production and feed Africa. We are going to work not as individual institutions, but as partners to achieve rapid results,” he said.
The director general of the Arab Bank for Economic Development, Sidi Ould Tah, said as development partners, multilateral development agencies must work with governments, civil society bodies, farmers, and sister agencies to feed Africa.
“This is a new departure for Africa; It is a new momentum, and we believe our common action will help Africa feed itself,” Tah said.
The president of the West African Development Bank, Serge Ekué, said his organisation plans to invest US$2 billion over five years to support agriculture in Africa. – APO Group-AfDB.
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