Thread by @NigeriaGov

INFORMATION:

Ebrima Faal, AfDB Director, NIgeria Office said Africa's $35 billion annual food import bill is no longer acceptable.

Excerpts from his interview with BusinessDayNg in Abuja:

Why is meeting with investors so important?

So part of the freed Africa strategy is to say that we have everything it takes to produce food domestically in Nigeria and the rest of the Africa to feed ourselves and to equally export some of these foods.

But of course to do that, we need to have an integrated value chain system and we have been working in the bank and some Countries have made advances, like Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, but Nigeria is the biggest agricultural country in the continent.

We have this special reach because once we got the buy in of the Government both at the federal and state level, we now have to start thinking of how to develop the programs which is going to require a lot of funding and expertise’s and the Chinese already have these.

China have been quite responsive, it was a little over 2 months ago that we expressed our interest to welcome Chinese investors to come and look at the opportunities across Nigeria in the South West, North East, we are very happy that they took us on that opportunity.

Apart from China, are there other partners?

We have received from the private sector in Nigeria, from almost every state in the federation, so is not just Chinese, and we also have the states themselves that want to invest in Agriculture.

On top of that we also see a lot interest coming from Europe especially in terms of wanting to invest in the processing side of things. People realize that they can get good returns to their investment in Nigeria while helping us to develop that space as well.

In terms of numbers, what do you think Nigeria can leverage through this partnerships, discussion?

The bank can help both the public sector, states, FG to develop the infrastructure around agricultural that's one. Two, we are also able to help the private investors if they wish to get financing from us, to then conduct the operations once those infrastructures are available.

So this special agro processing zone is going to be not only about growing the food and processing but how to develop the whole infrastructure around a particular set of crops

So you are not looking at financials yet?

We have three ways of financing things, one is debt and the other is equity. And the third one is if you are already in operations maybe retained earnings.

So more of it will be financed by debt, some of it will be financed by equity and of course for companies that have retained earnings they can use their own funds to be able to do it.

Which key sub-sectors or crops are you targeting?

The regions of Nigeria have their comparative advantages, in the North, you have sorghum, tomatoes, some animal husbandry; in the South, you have cocoa, palm oil, so depending on the investor interest we will have to support.

Talk through the bank’s feed Africa project and how Nigeria keys into it?

The remaining arable land in the world about 60% of that is in Africa, so agricultural opportunity is here. We also have the youngest population globally; other regions are aging but we have young people.

Part of the feed Africa strategy is that Africa now must feed itself and feed the rest of the world by exporting and bringing in foreign exchange instead of spending foreign exchange.

If you take most of the crops that we are talking about, Nigeria is either ranked 1st, 2nd or 3rd in terms of global production, so the revolution that we are seeking in agriculture has to happen in Nigeria for the rest of Africa to benefit from it.

Looking at sorghum, Nigeria is the 2nd largest producer in the world, the 3rd for cassava of so in world, but you look at tomatoes, Nigeria is the second highest importer of tomato paste. But we can grow the tomato, process it & get the tomato paste, consume and sell the rest.

There are fantastic investment opportunities, and to go with that is the job creation and opportunities for the young people and as I mentioned earlier I believe that when you provide that when you provide opportunities for the young people.

Apart from financing, is there anyway the AfDB is helping government shape some of these?

@AfDB_Group dialogue in Nigeria has been fruitful, the focus is on agriculture and human capital development in the ERGP is the same focus that we have in the 5 priorities of @AfDB_Group

So in terms of alignment of purpose, it is very similar and we will continue to engage the Nigerian government in difficult conversations.

What is the bank’s portfolio for Nigeria?

The bank’s current active portfolio is about $5 billion, we have been financing projects in Nigeria since 1972, so projects close, some of them finish and then close up, but those that that are still ongoing are about $5 billion.

The Agricultural sector has been around 8% of our total portfolio, over the next 5 years we want to push it to about 20%.

So basically over the next 5 years when we put all the projects together, it may reach $16 billion, now we cannot finance all of that so what we trying to do is to finance maybe a quarter of that, lest say 5, 5, 6 billion dollars…

…and private sector comes in to finance some of them & the Chinese are here for that and also our partners in development like the @WorldBank, @DFID_UK track record for Nigerian shows that for every dollar we spend, we get $45 partnership, that's significant