Africa-Press – Ethiopia. Some 50 of the 52 countries in Africa will have positive growth rates and five of the 10 fastest-growing economies in the world will be African countries, According to the African Development Bank Group President Adesina.
In an exclusive interview with ENA, President of the Bank said that people often talk about challenges of Africa, which is undeniable, but it also has opportunities.
Citing the Bank’s Economic Outlook 2023 report for Africa, he stated that GDP growth rate of African economies will grow at 4 percent while the world is about 2.7 percent and next year about 3.2 percent; thus, Africa is growing.
“So Africa’s head is well above water in a world where you have geopolitical risk, disruptions of supply chains, and rising debt levels and depreciation of many currencies and so on. So Africa is doing quite well; in fact 50 of the 52 countries in Africa that we looked at have positive growth rates and we expect that five of the 10 fastest growing economies in the world will be African countries again,” the President revealed.
The Bank works on Light and Power Africa is having huge impact, he said, adding “in the last six years that we have been doing this, we have connected well over 20 million people to electricity.”
According to the President, the Bank invests in transmission lines all across countries to be able to take power out and Ethiopia’s transmission line that goes all the way to Somalia and Djibouti providing electricity is one of those.
“We also invest heavily in renewable energy. Today we have invested in what is called Desert power. Desert power is to provide 10,000 megawatts of solar all across 11 countries called the Sahel and part of Africa. And what is that going to do is provide electricity for 250 million people and that will become the largest solar zone in the world. So we are leading when it comes to that particular issue of energy,” Adesian noted.
Another part of the Bank’s work is on agriculture, which is to feed Africa; he pointed out, and added “we are having tremendous success.”
Furthermore, he said that the geopolitical risk, particularly the Russia-Ukraine war has driven up the prices of energy, wheat and maize and affecting food situation in Africa.
He indicated that the Bank has been supporting African farmers to mitigate the current food crises in the world by increasing agricultural productivity in the continent.
“And so the issue is how is this going to affect Africa’s import demand from those countries? To mitigate that impact we put in place 1.5 billion USD Africa Emergency Food Production Facility that will quickly support African farmers, about almost 28 million farmers, to produce food valued at 12 billion USD. So I am pretty confident that with our support both in the short and medium term that we are doing; Africa will not have a food crisis, but we have to start taking agriculture very seriously,” Adesina stressed.
The Bank supported the Government of Ethiopia to have access to heat tolerant wheat varieties in Ethiopian lowlands where the country started cultivating them on 5000 hectares in 2018, he mentioned, and added that currently it is at 1.4 million hectares. “Ethiopia for the first time in history is now a net exporter of wheat.”
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