AfCFTA will enhance Africa’s agribussiness, trade ― Ighodalo

Chairman of Sterling Bank Plc, Mr Asue Ighodalo, has said the recent endorsement of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by African countries will impart positively on the agricultural sector and trade on the African continent.

Mr Ighodalo said this in Lagos while addressing participants at the opening of the 4th edition of the Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA) hosted by the bank in collaboration with Saro Africa, AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited, Leadway Assurance, Agriculture and Finance Consultants (AFC), Young Africa Works (MasterCard), Stears, Thrive Agric and Nestle.

He said the AfCFTA will undoubtedly achieve the objective of fostering agricultural transformation and advancement in the African region as part of the effort to promote food security and competitiveness through the improvement of regional agricultural value chains.

He expressed the hope that the easy access to regional importation of food products can help countries within Africa to achieve food security given that the pact connects 1.3 billion people across 55 countries with a combined GDP valued at $3.4 trillion. “It is, therefore, expected that the establishment of the AfCFTA would create new regional markets for farmers, strengthen the agro-value chains and significantly reduce agricultural imports from outside the continent,” he said.

According to him, with the design and implementation of the right trade policies mixed with scalable innovation and adequate leveraging of data and technology to maximise productivity, the nation’s and by extension the continent’s agribusiness sector could yet be transformed into a powerhouse that will not only feed the continent’s growing population but also create decent employment for millions of young people and perhaps absorb the shocks from the ongoing pandemic.

Speaking on the summit, Igbodalo noted that when Sterling Bank started ASA four years ago as a powerful advocacy platform to provide solutions towards rebuilding and transforming the agriculture sector into a resilience growth driver.

The chairman noted that ASA has become much more than a summit for the bank as it is one of the major sources of providing powerful suggestions to drive the wheel of inclusive growth in Africa, create employment, reduce poverty and provide a strong base for the manufacturing sector of the Nigerian economy.

While noting that that the expected outcome of the summit was for the bank to collaborate with key stakeholders to identify and deliver actionable steps to maximise the potential of the AfCFTA agreement to Africa’s agribusiness industries for sustained long-term growth and facilitate sizeable investments to drive increased output across the agribusiness value chain.

In his keynote address, Group Managing Director of Saro Africa, Mr Rasheed Sarumi, noted that the summit comes at a time the country is faced with numerous challenges, noting the agriculture sector if given needed attention can salvage the economy.

He was of the view that the agriculture sector needs to be highly innovative to meet the demands and expectations of stakeholders given the current global realities in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sarumi said: “Innovation can solve problems, will attract good capital, it would address consumers pain. It can propel the growth of agric in Africa more than we’ve had over the last 30 years, especially the last 20 years.”

Also speaking, the President of Afreximbank, Professor Benedict Oramah, who presented a keynote address entitled: The Green Mile – AfCFTA, Trade and Africa’s Agribusiness Economy, encouraged African countries to rise above the loss of revenue that would have accrued to them and see the bigger picture in the enhanced regional trade that the new trade regime would bring on the continent.

The Afreximbank’s President who was represented by Director of Advisory and Capital Markets, Afreximbank, Mr Ibrahim Sagna, remarked that at the forefront of Africa’s economic integration with various forms of products keyed towards financing and promoting intra-African trade.

While commending the organisers of the summit, Orama said agriculture has the potential to fast track Africa’s economic growth, industrialisation, employment and economic sustainability, among other benefits.

He harped on the need to strengthen agriculture development and its value chains to be the driving force for the African economy that would emerge from the AfCFTA.

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