Africa-Press – Eswatini. The Afreximbank is putting in place an investment of E2 billion in order to help Eswatini come up with facilities that will improve agriculture in the country.
This was said by Afreximbank Director of Trade Facilitation and Investment Promotion Dr Gainmore Zanamwe. He said this was because the Afreximbank was the right partner for Eswatini in its quest to accelerate economic growth in the country.
Dr Zanamwe said his institution wanted to enhance intra-Africa trade so that African countries could be able to trade with one another. According to the director, investment by Africans in Africa was low, compared to the investments made by the same Africans in other countries outside the continent.
The director noted that investment in Africa was low because of lack of infrastructure. However, Dr Zanamwe said when they looked at the problem closely, they found out that it was beyond the lack of infrastructure. Another problem was that there was lack of knowledge from Africans regarding trading with their fellow Africans.
He understood that if one did not know his neighbour, it was difficult to trust that neighbour. It was for that reason why Afreximbank wanted to maintain the African International Trade Fair, which was revived in 2018. This year, it will be held in Algeria from September 4 to 10, 2025. He invited Eswatini to be part of this event.
Dr Zanamwe said they spent about US$20 billion to revive and sustain the event thus far and the results began to show. He mentioned that they funded the Dangote Refinery, a gesture which enabled the factory to refine Nigeria’s oil to many different petroleum products, including fertiliser.
The director event suggested to Minister of Agriculture Mandla Tshawuka to consider buying fertiliser from the Dangote Group in Nigeria, as the minister had earlier on stated that Eswatini wanted to improve agriculture to achieve food sovereignty. Dr Zanamwe stated that they wanted to develop an ocean route from the ports of Nigeria to Walvis Bay in Namibia to make it easy for the products to be transported from Nigeria and the rest of West Africa the Southern African countries like Namibia, Botswana, and even Eswatini.
He said the reason he pledged the investment was that he heard Minister Tshawuka speaking about the country’s ambition to achieve food sovereignty and felt that Afreximbank should help in this regard.
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