AfDB to commit $10bn over five years for food

The African Development Bank will commit $10 billion over the next five years to boost food production on the continent and help end its reliance on imports.

“The population of Africa will rise to 2 billion by 2050, and they must be fed,” Akinwumi Adesina, the Abidjan, Ivory Coast-based lender’s president, said at an agriculture-investment conference in Diamniadio, Senegal. “We must take decisive actions now to secure their food supplies.”

Governments on the continent are seeking to pitch strategies to increase agricultural output at the meeting to secure funding from development banks, the US, European Union and UK, and private partners.

Africa currently imports more than 100 million metric tons of cereals worth $75 billion a year, according to the AfDB. Its food and agriculture market has the potential to reach to $1 trillion by 2030, Adesina said.

Rising food prices and disruption to food supplies due to the Covid-19 pandemic showed Africa’s reliance on imports of food staples and agricultural inputs. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine also upended global grain markets and caused a shortage of fertilizer.

Climate change causing devastating floods in part of the continent and an ongoing drought in the Horn of Africa have resulted in the continent experiencing its worst food crisis with 280 million people suffering from hunger, according to the UN.

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