Media Contact: Obi Emekekwue (oemekekwue@afreximbank.com; Tel. +202-2456-4238; Mobile +2010-2086-6222)
Afreximbank President Jean-Louis Ekra (right), stresses a point to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development of Nigeria, at the Bank’s Cairo Headquarters. (Copyright: Afreximbank photos)
President Jean-Louis Ekra of Afreximbank (left) speaking during the meeting with the Dr. Adesina (right).
Cairo, 22 February 2013 – The African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank) should target financing to support agricultural businesses in Nigeria to boost exports and make African products more competitive in the global market, the Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, said in Cairo today.
Speaking at a meeting at the Afreximbank Headquarters to discuss opportunities in the Nigerian agricultural sector, Dr. Adesina said that Nigeria was interested in an ongoing partnership with the Bank toward a government-enabled private sector-led development of agricultural business in Nigeria and was seeking financing for the country’s cassava chips exporters. According to the Minister, a network of 15 to 20 Nigerian cassava chip firms intend to export their produce to China in 2013 and will require up to 40 million dollars in financing.
Nigeria was implementing an agricultural transformation agenda and wanted Afreximbank to come in and participate across the value chain, he said. He identified some of the areas where opportunities existed to include the cassava export sector, the cocoa sector and the rice sector, among others. The Government was establishing staple crop processing zones across the country to drive concentrated investments from the private sector, he said. An initial 14 sites for anchor zones had already been identified along with five value chains, including rice, cassava, fisheries, horticulture and sorghum.
Earlier, Afreximbank President Jean-Louis Ekra said that the by carrying out more local processing of their agricultural products before export, African countries added more value and created jobs at home.
Afreximbank already had a programme in place under which it was supporting increased processing of cocoa beans in Africa prior to their export to factories abroad, he said. Through that programme, known as the African Cocoa Initiative, the Bank was enabling Africans benefit more from the 80 per cent of world cocoa which they produced.
The Bank would cooperate with Nigeria in order to move forward on some of the projects being implemented by the government to change the face of agriculture in Nigeria, continued Mr. Ekra. It would also look at the broader areas of the agricultural business, such as infrastructure, cold chain, product processing, etc.
——–
About Afreximbank:
The African Export Import Bank was established in October 1993 by African governments, African private and institutional investors, and non-African investors to finance and promote intra- and extra-African trade. Its two basic constitutive documents are the Establishment Agreement, which gives it the status of an international organization, and the Charter, which governs its corporate structure and operations. AFREXIMBANK is headquartered in Cairo. For more information, visit: www.afreximbank.com