Sterling Bank Plc has announced plans with her partners, Leadway Assurance, Nestle Nigeria Plc, Microsoft Nigeria, Thrive Agric, GIZ, Stears Data among others, to unlock $1trillion in Africa’s agricultural sector, through 2022 Agricultural Summit Africa (ASA).
The summit, which is the largest private sector led conference on the agriculture sector in sub-Saharan Africa, is taking place on October 26th and 27th of 2022.
This edition of the ASA will focus on how the agribusiness sector can further unlock value and accelerate growth and transform Nigeria into a trillion-dollar economy.
Group head of Agric and Solid Minerals Finance at Sterling Bank, Dr. Olushola Obikanye, who made this announcement in a statement released by the bank yesterday, said, ASA 2022, with the theme ‘Engineering a Trillion Dollar Agricultural Economy’, will amongst other objectives, highlight recent successes of Nigeria’s agricultural diversification efforts by showcasing actual accomplishments and innovations.
The summit, he added, will also be driving discourse to achieve actionable steps that will clear a path to achieving the true potential of the agribusiness sector of the economy.
He said: “with our roster of esteemed partners, the value of a gathering like the ASA to the Nigerian agribusiness sector and economy becomes evident as the focus becomes stronger to make the most of the comparative advantages Nigeria has to help the country reach its potential.”
Obikanye said, the summit, will among other focus areas; deepen the conversation on Africa’s small-scale primary producers who make up more than 60 per cent of Africa’s farming population and produces over 90 per cent of our domestic output.
He reiterated the fact that, Nigeria and Africa at large needs to step up their import substitution drives by producing and sourcing locally at least 70 per cent to 80 per cent of the raw materials to revive our industries and create jobs for our teeming populations.
According to him, this would boost mechanisation, the acquisition of inputs, and operator expansion among those involved in the value chain and result in higher output.
He explained that the summit will seek to explore the practicability of sustainable storage and power solutions at scale to drive aggregation and processing for value multiplication as the bedrock for services built around the sector’s output.
Nigerian economy, he said, has immense and unrealised potential in her primary production sectors to attain a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) estimated to be in the region of $440 billion.
Obikanye pointed out that the economies of some of the most developed countries in the world shared many similarities in their path to prosperity.
