10 June 2014 We’re still talking money with this report from Ventures Africa that Africa’s agricultural sector is projected to grow by about $1 trillion in 2030. This very interesting information was made public by Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina at the 2014 International AgrikExpo held in Lagos, Nigeria.
The minister also shared some of the giant strides that the ministry has made in the last few years. He revealed that the government has initiated a self sufficiency plan to cut down Nigeria’s importation of rice substantially. Nigeria currently spends about $4 billion on rice importation and the plan is to save about $2.5 billion of that every year. The country is fast on the way to that, as the Minister shared that rice production rose by 4.3 million metric tonnes and the number of integrated modern rice mills in the country rose from five to 15 in the past two years.
Dr Adesina also talked about the country’s Growth enhancement Scheme where farmers across Nigeria receive subsidized fertilizer and seeds via electronic voucher on their phones popularly called e-wallet, as part of the government’s efforts to sanitize fertilizer procurement and distribution processes.
He stated that the e-wallet system had reached reached over eight million farmers in 2 years and noted that Nigeria was the first country in the world to adopt this electronic platform to help farmers purchase subsidized farm inputs on their mobile phones.