Author: Olanrewaju Adesina
The African Development Bank’s (AfDB) Africa Digital Financial Inclusion (ADFI) facility will receive $15 million to develop and extend digital financial solutions to women-owned small and medium businesses across Africa. According to the bank, women entrepreneurs from Nigeria, Cameroon, Egypt, Kenya and Mozambique would benefit from the fund through the Women Entrepreneurs Finance Initiative (We-Fi). Under the arrangement, the funds would enable the ADFI facility to design and implement programmes to improve digital access to finance for women entrepreneurs. The bank added that the fund would also reduce the $ 42 billion gender finance gap and improve women’s operational efficiency…
A leading agro-business company in Nigeria, Chi Farms Limited, has improved its meat processing, as part of moves to expand food production in Nigeria and meet demands. Managing Director of Chi Farms Tunji Olaitan said “The doubling of our operations is aimed at meeting the growing demand for our safe, healthy and affordable foods available to all categories of our esteemed customers. We want to make our products available to capture and build a healthy population that will drive our business through their patronage. We want to encourage the consumption of healthy foods, with a focus to reduce the risk…
The National Agricultural Land Development Authority (NALDA) has commenced its “Aggressive Food Production” project in eight communities in the Shendam Local Government Area of Plateau State. The projects include the cultivation of 200 hectares of maize for the 2022 wet season and drilling of five solar-powered boreholes for dry season farming. The communities had earlier donated a total of 618 hectares for the project while the authority is commencing the first phase of production on 200 hectares. The Executive Secretary of NALDA, Prince Paul Ikonne, during a visit to the communities, explained that the initiative was part of President Muhammadu…
The African Development Bank (AfDB) has raised $540 million, which equates to about N224.3 billion, for Nigeria to develop the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZs), as part of efforts to boost food security in the country. According to a statement from the State House in Abuja, the AfDB President, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, made this known while briefing President Muhammadu Buhari. The former Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development said, “We have decided to mobilise $540 for the programme. The African Development Bank has approved a total of $210 million. The Islamic Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural…
The number of micro, small and medium enterprises across the nation has reduced by about two million between 2017 and 2021, the Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN), has stated. It said the country’s MSMEs reduced from about 41 million in 2017 to 39 million in 2021, as this was due to the impact of The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) and other challenges on small businesses across the country. The Director-General of SMEDAN, Dikko Radda, made this known during an event, organised by the Transparency Advocacy for Development Initiative in collaboration with SMEDAN in Abuja.He said, “According to…
Minister of agriculture and rural development, Dr. Mohammad Abubakar has said that Federal Government’s collaboration with the donor assisted projects have paid off by resulting in the development of more agri-business hubs in Nigeria. Dr. Abubakar stated this in Abuja while inaugurating the National Steering Committees of the three donor assisted projects; the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP), Agro-Processing Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support Project (APPEALS), and Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Programme Phase-One (ATASP-1), jointly funded by the World Bank and African Development Bank.The committees, which are chaired by the minister himself, and his minister for state,…
While it’s contributed the least to climate change, Africa is being hit the hardest by its effects. The climate crisis is code red for humanity, but especially so for the African continent. Increasing temperatures, a surge in natural disasters, locust invasions, floods, and drought. It sounds like the stuff of nightmares. But these extreme events are happening right now as a direct result of climate change and they’re threatening all areas of life across Africa. Although climate change is affecting the whole continent, it’s not affecting all regions in the same way. While millions of people are affected by flooding…
A case has been made for the spread of the coverage of the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP), a project targeted at boosting food production under the supervision of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to more states in the country due to the impressive results recorded in rice and maize production. Despite the available information country is deficient in the two commodities, production have increased significantly through the ABP. This is because farmers had lamented that seeds, fertiliser and other inputs for food crop production have become too expensive, and extending assistance to them through the ABP scheme is not…
The World Bank has disclosed that import restrictions and non-flexible exchange rate management of the Central Bank of Nigeria are the major driving forces for food inflation in Nigeria. The Washington-based bank said this in a new biannual report by the World Bank known as Africa’s Pulse. The report read in part, “Rising food prices are the underlying factor behind the surge of headline inflation in Nigeria. Food prices have increased due to import restrictions and a nonflexible exchange rate management. The current regime is keeping the official exchange rate of the naira artificially strong while the naira has weakened…
