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Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Africa middle class to create N198trn market by 2030 - World Bank

The World Bank has said that by 2030, serving the food demands of Africa’s growing middle class alone will create a market worth $1 trillion about N198 trillion, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The president of the Alliance for the Green Revolution in Africa and until last year, Rwandan Minister of Agriculture and Animal Resources, Dr Agnes Kalibata who quoted the World Bank, said, “Agri-preneurs can own that market if we tap the two assets that should be an unbeatable combination: the world’s largest population of young people, and the world’s largest holdings of uncultivated arable land. In fact, our study found access to land could dramatically increase youth participation in agriculture, particularly for young women farmers”. 

Kalibata, NaijaAgroNet gathered, added that in many ways Africa is in an enviable situation. Two of Africa’s biggest challenges – its fight to achieve food security and its urgent need to find employment for its young people – can be transformed into its biggest assets.
“Our youth can become the labour force and brain trust that harvests the wealth of that $1 trillion food market. Only then can we watch the narrative of African agriculture transform, from farming as drudgery and a struggle to survive to farming as opportunity and a business that thrives,” he said. 

This week hundreds of agriculture experts from the public and private sector will converge on Lusaka, Zambia, for the 2015 African Green Revolution Forum. A key priority of the meeting is to move aggressively to incorporate Africa’s soaring youth population – the 226 million people between 15 and 24 who have made Africa the world’s youngest continent – into efforts already underway to embrace our family farmers as the focal point for Africa’s economic transformation, NaijaAgroNet learnt. 

Information monitored on THE STAR site said, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, found that lack of land, extension services, credit, quality farm inputs, machinery, markets and other impediments are preventing agriculture from providing jobs on and off the farm for a youth population that accounts for 65 per cent of the total population in Africa. More than 10 million youth enter the labour market annually. 

Cyriacus Nnaji/GEE

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