Interview: Agricultural transformation sure way of ending poverty in Africa: AfDB chief

The surest way of eradicating poverty in Africa is by transforming agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), has said.

Adesina, who spoke to Xinhua while on a working visit to Ghana earlier this month, said the AfDB would lead in this transformation agenda to ensure Africa was able to feed itself and build agro-processing factories to process what was grown on the continent.

According to him, if Africa is able to transform agriculture, it would have created wealth for rural farmers, majority of whom are women, as well as end food importation and save hard-earned foreign exchange for investment.

To address the issue of poverty in Africa, the AfDB boss said incomes of those in rural areas must be increased rapidly while transforming agriculture.

Studies have shown that poverty in Africa is high in the rural areas, where about 70 percent of them live, while urban poverty is concentrated in urban slums.

"Africa is spending today 35 billion U.S. dollars importing food; that is food that Africa can produce. Africa has 65 percent of all the arable lands in the world to feed 9 billion people by 2050," he said.

He therefore urged the continent to unlock the potentials of agriculture.

"When we unlock that potential of agriculture, if we produce, if we process, if we add value, if we have agro-allied industries, that will create a lot of everything we produce."

He cited the example of Ghana, which is the world's second largest producer of cocoa, suggesting that "if you are the second largest producer of anything, you should probably be the second largest processor of it."

"And so at the African Development Bank, we are going to support countries to end the need to export raw material. I want them adding value; I want them setting up agro-allied industries. Africa has no business being at the bottom of the value chain; Africa should be at the top of the value chain," the top development banking executive said.

Adesina underscored the fundamental importance of feeding Africa as food was a fundamental human right, emphasizing that the continent could not develop if it fed its people with food imported from elsewhere.

"Every economy or region in the world that has developed has done so by first feeding themselves," he said.

"When we feed Africa, we would reduce our dependency on food imports; we will make sure that there is significant amount of foreign exchange; you will reduce inflation; you will create jobs in rural areas; you will get greater macro-economic and fiscal stabilities for our countries," he said. Endit