The Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) project in Nigeria will receive support funding of $500 million from the African Development Bank (AfDP), and $200 million, pledged by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Technical Adviser to the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Richard-Mark Mbaram, stated this Saturday during an interactive session with journalists at a webinar.
The SAPZ will be formally inaugurated at the 2020 edition of the Feed Nigeria Summit, the country’s flagship agricultural sector convocation, set to hold December 1 – 2. This year’s summit, to be held at the Ladi Kwali Conference Centre, Sheraton Hotel and Towers, Abuja, is themed, “Agribusiness: Leading Nigeria’s Recovery.”
Chairman, Organising Committee, Feed Nigeria Summit 2020, Professor Eustace Iyayi, said this year’s gathering would focus on how Nigeria could make full economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic by piggybacking on agro-industrialisation.
Iyayi, a Professor of Animal Nutrition and Feed Biotechnology, said at the webinar yesterday that the summit was aimed at encouraging conversation around key evidence-based solutions for recalibrating the Nigerian economy by leveraging the agricultural sector’s transformative capacity.
Iyayi said, “FNS2020 can draw attention to the huge gap that continues to exist between production and need. This gap can be significantly reduced by funding support to the private sector to boost production against next year.
“Farmers and other operators need to be given incentives because many already have their businesses wiped out or significantly downsized due to COVID 19.”
Iyayi noted that FNS2020 would serve as a platform to unveil the National Agricultural Technology and Innovation Plan (NATIP), the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development’s new policy direction being spearheaded by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Alhaji Muhammad Sabo Nanono.
The ministry’s private-sector inclusion campaign, the Agriculture Policy Alliance Project (APAP), which is a key component of NATIP, will also form part of key engagement areas at the summit.
With SAPZ set for take-off in January 2021, FNS2020 will play a major role in the project’s effective start, Iyayi said.
He explained, “Beyond discussion, FNS2020 must push for industrialisation. Something just has to push us to that next level. FNS2020 could be that something and the time is now.
“If we have state actors and some investors whose buy-in we have already gotten, such must be used to jump-start the SAPZ launching. Something just has to start!”
The Feed Nigeria Summit has over the years been a cardinal platform for stakeholder engagement targeted at accelerating the country’s race towards self-sufficiency in food production. Hosted annually by AgroNigeria, the Voice of Nigeria’s Agriculture Summit has consistently served as a critical tool for positioning the sector as the key economic growth vehicle for Nigeria.
SAPZ is an integrated development initiative designed to concentrate agro-processing activities within areas of high agricultural potential to boost productivity, integrate production, processing and marketing of selected commodities. It is a federal government collaborative project with the AfDB, to be executed in partnership with FMARD and other key partners.
Bennett Oghifo