The African Development Bank (AfDB) has disclosed its plan to raise $1 billion to address the looming food scarcity in Africa, including Nigeria.
As reported on BizWatch Nigeria, due to the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, Nigeria, and other African countries are poised to be challenged with food scarcity.
To avert the impending challenge, AfDB’s president Akinwumi Adesina said the international financial body would use the funding to help 40 million African farmers utilise climate-resilient technologies and increase their output of heat-tolerant wheat varieties and other crops.
“We are going to be really ramping up our efforts to mobilise that money.
“If there was ever a time that we needed to really drastically raise food production in Africa, for Africa’s food security and to mitigate the impact of this food crisis arising from this war, it is now,” he was quoted as saying.
What you should know
According to a report from the United States (US) Department of Agriculture, Russia and Ukraine constituted 23% of the global wheat market, worth 206.9 million metric tonnes in 2021.
Global economic sanctions occasioned by the war in Ukraine upended grain shipments when global stockpiles were already tight, raising the risk of a full-blown hunger crisis.
Meanwhile, the African richest man Aliko Dangote recently sought food security in Nigeria, as he predicted that the country would soon experience scarcity.
According to the President of Dangote Industries, in a matter of three months from now, Nigerians would start to experience food scarcity as the adverse consequence of the Russian-Ukraine war.
