The President of the African
Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, has said that the savannahs of Africa
cover a mind-boggling 600 million hectares, of which 400 million hectares are
cultivable, reports NaijaAgroNet.
But just 10% of this is cultivated, a mere 40 million
hectares, Adesina said Wednesday, while speaking at a session titled “Transformation of the African Savannah Initiative”
at the 2017 World
Food Prize-Borlaug Dialogue.
According to the AfDB President, so huge is the potential of
African savannahs that the World Bank called the Guinea savanna zone “one of
the major underutilised resources in Africa.”
He noted that Africa’s savannahs were better than the
savannahs of Brazil, a country notable for turning its savannahs into
agricultural wealth, saying Africa’s soils were not acidic and therefore did
not need liming which had to be done at massive scales in Brazil.
“The initiative will start by bringing approximately two
million hectares of savannah in eight African countries — Ghana, Guinea,
Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, Uganda, Kenya, Zambia,
and Mozambique under the cultivation of maize, soybean, and livestock production
in optimum conditions,” he said.
The goal of which, Adesina informed NaijaAgroNet, is to
double production in those eight countries.
Isaac Oyimah/GEE
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