Victor Emeruwa
Experts at the ongoing Africa Green Revolution Forum, AGFR, Kigali 2020 have made a call for prioritization nutrition in Agricultural production. The Summit in its third day Session focused on issues of Nutrition and Health.
The Managing Director of AGRF, Dr. Debisi Araba while debriefing journalists maintain that the only way African cities can ensure food security is to prioritize quality nutrition in the entire value chain and food systems.
“The Forum is concerned about how farmers can get the kind of tools it requires to access vital input to be able to grow productive and profitable crops,” said Araba.
He emphasized the need to utilize the opportunity offered by technology to provide solutions to the problems facing the continent: “We have to be able to leverage technologies to solve problems Africa is facing,” he said.
One of the problems which requires the use of technology is the mechanization of agricultural process and production in such a way that the young population can be attracted to the space.
Africa urban is faced with high population of unemployed people – it is estimated that about 65% of young Africans are unemployment- this presents an opportunity to use technology to scale up and attract young unemployed into Agriculture.
“As the number participation in Agricultural activities improves Africa will be able to solve the food import bill of about 30 to 35billion dollars,” AGRF MD said.
As African cities begin to relax from COVID -19 restrictions, farmers and experts urge government to learn from the lessons of the pandemic to ensure that the cities have the right infrastructure for food transportation, preservation and production as well as sufficient plan for creating necessary resilience:
“We can no longer depend on food import and reliance of foreign inputs, that is what COVID-19 has shown” said Patience Koku, Founder of Replenish Farms.
