Opening Day Of The World Economic Forum (WEF) 2017

A NEW CAPITALISM: Views From The Top

By Akinwumi A. Adesina, President, African Development Bank.



We are in a battle against time to curb the COVID-19 pandemic. While tackling the Coronavirus pandemic has grabbed global attention, a new crisis that could claim a lot more lives is brewing in Africa: massive locust invasions.



Billions of desert locusts are ravaging countries all across East Africa, including Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, South Sudan, Uganda, and Djibouti. It has been reported that their numbers are likely to increase by up to 400 times by June 2020, reaching crisis levels.



The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has estimated that unless quickly controlled, 5 million additional people in East Africa will be hungry by June.



An unprecedented race against time has begun to urgently stop the progression and potentially devastating impact of the deadly twins: COVID-19 and the locusts for millions in Africa.



We all know that rains are good for crops. But then when good rains also caused favorable breeding environments for locusts, the joy of rains has suddenly turned hopes of expected plenty into glooms of hunger.&nbsp; Is the best of times becoming the worst of times?



Locust breeding populations have increased massively. The locust plague moves with devastating effects: imagine a carpet of locusts of up to 150 million locusts covering a square kilometer. And think about it, that they can consume crops in one day that can feed approximately 35,000 people. In East Africa, where FAO estimates that some 20 million people are already food insecure, the effects will be devastating.



The locust crisis emerges as the continent is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. These are tough odds to face.



Today, distressfully, choices for millions of the poor are oddly similar: to stay in confinement and escape dying from Coronavirus or dying from hunger staying at home.



It is already playing out. Food riots broke out a few days ago in Kibera, the largest slum in Kenya, as people trampled over each other, defying social distancing &#8211; prescribed to stem the spread of the Coronavirus &#8211; to get food. Coronavirus could kill, but hunger kills many more people.



With the lockdowns for the COVID-19 pandemic, pest control workers are largely unable to go out to spray. While restrictions have been lifted to allow aircrafts used to spray to operate, they can do little as they are largely unable to get access to the chemicals, due to disruption of supply chains.



It appears that those who escape the COVID-19 will soon face LOCUST-19. In East Africa alone, the number of hungry people could jump to 30 million people.



There are several lifesaving recommendations we can act on now. These include one, the creation of a &#8220;green channel&#8221; for the free flow of food and agricultural inputs and pesticides to control pest attacks. Two, putting in place measures to prevent food price hikes by releasing food from government grain reserves and implementing anti-hoarding policies. Three, rapidly scaling up food production technologies, including high-yielding, early-maturing, drought-tolerant, disease- and pest-resistant staple crops, and programs such as the African Development Bank’s flagship program, the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) initiative.



The good news is that the African Development Bank has joined the FAO as the frontrunners in this unprecedented race against time. The Bank has just approved a $1.5 million grant to the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) and the FAO to support efforts to spray against the locusts and safeguard livelihoods in the East and the Horn of Africa. More help will be needed.



The last thing Africa needs now, as we are battling with the COVID-19 pandemic, is a hunger pandemic.



COVID-19 has taken the international community on an unpredictable journey. Thankfully, we can preclude and halt the locust crisis. For that to happen, we all must rally around the FAO to provide the $153 million needed.



COVID-19 cannot be followed by LOCUST-19.

PRST Adesina

Op-Ed: Why Africa Cannot Afford LOCUST-19

Photo by: Kelechi Amadi-Obi (www.kelechiamadiobi.com)

Africa’s Mr Development

From November 7-9, Africa Inc. will convene in South Africa’s Gauteng Province, the continent’s seventh largest economy, for the inaugural Africa Investment Forum (AIF).
An initiative of the African Development Bank (AfDB), it was announced in May in Johannesburg by AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina with Gauteng premier David Makhura.
“It will be the continent’s first-ever investment market place,” said Adesina, formerly Nigeria’s minister of agriculture.
“South Africa is open for business again, and as Gauteng, we are ready to host the forum on behalf of not only South Africa, but for Africa,” said Makhura, calling the forum “the Davos of Africa”.
A platform to close the investment gap, Adesina called it a game-changing initiative.
<a href="http://www.forbesafrica.com/investment-guide/2014/08/01/the-investment-hotspot/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">READ MORE: The Investment Hotspot</a>
“It cannot be business as usual, it must be business unusual,” he said.
With Africa’s population set to be two billion by 2050, its development needs will require an estimated $600-$700 billion per annum. So accelerated development will be the forum’s focus.
“The forum will be 100% transactional. There will be no political speeches. The only thing allowed will be transactions, transactions and transactions,” said Adesina. In attendance in November will also be African heads of state who will be present as the CEOs of their countries.
In a sit-down interview with FORBES AFRICA, the AfDB president shared more about new investments, and the bread baskets and Silicon Valleys of Africa:
How will AIF take Afro-optimism and the African growth story further? 
African economies have been growing relatively well in a very difficult global environment. Despite the global economic downturn, in 2016, they grew at roughly 2.2%; in 2017, they grew at 3.6%. In 2018, they are projected to grow at 4.1%. And that’s still above the global average.
So Africa’s head is above the water. But it’s more than about keeping your head above the water that matters, it is about how fast you can swim. I think Africa needs to swim fast and needs a lot of oxygen to do that. And that means a lot of firepower in terms of capital to close the infrastructure gap. To be able to drive millions of people out of poverty, Africa should be growing at double digits.
To be able to do that we have to deal with the problem of lack of electricity, make sure there is a lot more investment to allow trade to happen. Africa could contribute a lot more be it is rail, ports, national highways or aviation. It has to change lives on the ground and quiet honestly when people ask if I am an Afro-optimist, I am a very proud African. Africa is a beautiful place and has tremendous potential so we shouldn’t always just talk about the potential because nobody eats potential. We have to unlock that potential. So that is what the Africa Investment Forum is all about. Be it oil, gas, minerals or agricultural commodities, Africa is awash with rich resources.
The question is how to turn them into real dividends with significant amounts of revenue that allows a better quality of life for the people. For that, you need to deal with the infrastructure deficit. We used to say it is about $15 billion. But that has changed. The AfDB recently released the African Economic Outlook report and the deficit is anywhere between $67 billion to $107 billion every year, so which means we must do a faster job pulling capital together because the rest of the world is not waiting.
How long will it take to close that gap? 
I think within the next decade. But it’s going to take a lot of work…
What about the youth dividend; what are the future industries? 
Africa is at the very top in fintech and mobile money… but as we look at new types of industries, we have to look at them in the context of the fourth industrial revolution… I get excited when I see the youth in Africa well-educated, they are all on social media, know how to use apps, which means they already have a leg up. So the key is how to re-tool them to operate in that kind of a new economy. The AfDB is doing that in three ways already. First is we signed up a joint program with Google and Microsoft to help develop young talented Africans in computer technology. We as a bank are already investing in technology parks in Cape Verde, Angola, Kenya, Senegal, Rwanda. These are technology parks where you can have the ICT industries emerge; almost like trying to create the Silicon Valleys of Africa.
When it comes to the new economy, you have to start early. We have a program trying to create 250 coding centers in Africa where you get people with computational knowledge to do coding services that can help in this new world we are moving towards. We are also investing in universities for science and technology across Africa to create this new scientific human capital…We need to give African youth the skills they need for the jobs of the future, not for the jobs of yesterday.
What then are the new wealth generators? 
If you look at where the money is going in Africa, it’s not actually going into oil, gas and natural resources. Most of the foreign direct investment (FDI) is going into the service industry, at least 64%, and also the financial services sector; maybe about 27% goes into the manufacturing sector. So these are the big sectors where you see a lot of FDI. But there are two sectors very important for me. 
One is ICT, because this is going to be the driver of the economy. It’s very important for countries to invest heavily in the ICT industry to give their countries the platforms they need in the knowledge economy.
The second is the food and agriculture industry. Africa has a lot of oil and gas, but nobody drinks oil, nobody smokes the gas. Food is the future. The size of the food and agriculture industry in Africa is going to be $1 trillion by 2030 in Africa. This is where the wealth is supposed to come from. Unfortunately, in Africa, we always walk past gold. Just imagine you are seeing gold, and you see it as dirt and don’t recognize it. That’s the power agriculture has… The food business is the biggest business. Agriculture is not a development sector, it’s not a social sector, it’s a wealth-creating sector. Agriculture is a business and Africa needs to fully unlock that potential. If you look at the amount of arable land left to feed nine billion people in the world by 2050, it is not in Europe, Latin America, Asia, or the US, it’s in Africa – 65% is right here. What Africa does with agriculture will determine the future of food for the world.
How will Africa’s billionaires and capitalists help achieve these goals? 
If you look at the high-networth-individuals in Africa, the majority of them make their money on this continent, and that’s already a strong signal. Aliko Dangote makes his money in Africa. 
So we are going to get them involved on the Africa Investment Forum because it is trying to send a message to the world that we have African businesses that are viable businesses making money and doing well on the continent; so putting capital to help them expand can help them become global multi-national companies…
And investing in African entrepreneurs? 
The issue for entrepreneurs is finding them, nurturing them and then putting the financial backing behind them to thrive. Africa has a lot of young people. Every day, I wake up I read about a young person doing so well. So the best investment that Africa can make is to put its capital at risk on behalf of its young people. Because when you see a young person walk into a financial institution, all you see is risk, risk, risk. We have to change that and try and see creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. So that way we can put your money at risk to make them more creative, more innovative and unleash their entrepreneurship capacity. That is why at AfDB, we have a program helping to invest in the early-stage businesses of young people. Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates didn’t just get there, somebody had to believe in them.
We have a program set up with the European Union called Boost Africa to invest in young people. The other thing we are doing is helping unleash entrepreneurship in the food and agriculture industry. The bank has a program targeted at getting young graduates, medical doctors, engineers… who are all going to agriculture as a business. Last year, AfDB invested over $860 million in that program for about eight countries. Going forward, we expect to invest $1.5 billion dollars every year in that program for the next 10 years. 
I really think unless we change the mindset, the labor composition of the agricultural sector and create a new dynamic group of entrepreneurs in the food industry, we only will have old people left. Every university in Africa has to make entrepreneurship compulsory.
&#8211; By Karen Mwendera and Methil Renuka

Adesina_KM

Investment Marketplace Coming To Africa

We called it. Nigeria, the African Development Bank’s (AfDB), biggest shareholder, finally landed the bank’s presidency at its fourth attempt.
Final figures showed Akinwumi Adesina, the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in the administration of former president, Goodluck Jonathan, was backed by 58.01% of all shareholders, to defeat Chad’s finance minister, Kordje Bedoumra (34.48%), and Cape Verde’s finance minister, Cristina Duarte (2.87%).
Africa’s largest country, which holds 9.3% of the AfDB, almost double the total of the next two biggest African shareholders, had failed on three previous attempts to capture the presidency of the bank since its inception in 1964, scuttled by an unwritten rule that Africa’s biggest economies shouldn’t vie for big continental positions and the discomfort of smaller nations wary of domination and stronger candidates than its own.
“Today, I have been given a great responsibility,” said Adesina after beating seven other candidates that had contested one of the most open election processes for a global development finance institution that mirrors the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the Asian Development Bank.
“I will be a president for all. I will not let you down.”
In six rounds of voting, in Abidjan, the capital of CÔte d’Ivoire, spanning just over four hours, Nigeria’s alliances proved the more resilient. In the first round, Adesina was second with 26% of the overall vote, trailing Duarte who led by 29.5%, with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC)-backed Thomas Sakala of Zimbabwe third, with 13.5%. Sierra Leone’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Samura Kamara, whose country holds 0.25%, was eliminated after receiving 0.3%. No figures were available for the latter rounds at the time of going to press.
Adesina takes over Africa’s only triple-A rated development finance institution, which last year increased project funding by 15% to $7.6 billion, largely in infrastructure, adding to the $28 billion poured in the decade to 2014, versus $18 billion in the four decades between 1964 and 2004.
Aside from infrastructure, outgoing president, Donald Kaberuka of Rwanda, also focused on attracting private sector money to the bank, an effort that saw South Africa’s FirstRand and the bank partnering in creating a $200-million fund to boost African trade. The inclusion of women in economic development was also key, as well as continuing efforts to reduce conflict through the bank’s Fragile States initiative.
Both Adesina and Nigeria’s former Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, under whose watch Nigeria supported Adesina, emphasized inclusiveness in the bank’s decision-making process, seeking to allay the fears of marginalization raised by smaller African countries who have now seen the number one and number two economies take leadership of the continent’s foremost institutions after South Africa’s Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma was elected Chairperson of the African Union in 2012 in heavy lobbying African analysts say came at a heavy political price for President Jacob Zuma.
“We will be inclusive in our approach,” Okonjo-Iweala told FORBES AFRICA after Adesina’s victory. “It’s a great 50th anniversary gift from God to the country. We appreciate it and we take the responsibility very seriously. We will not abuse it.”
In his statement to the board of governors in support of his nomination, Adesina said he wanted to help build a competitive and more integrated Africa while ensuring that growth is more inclusive. To achieve this, his strategy combines five key themes including some from the AfDB’s 10-year strategy outlined at the 2014 meetings and the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063.
That seeks an integrated infrastructure program, growing the private sector, creating jobs for women and youth, reviving Africa’s rural economies and pursuing regional integration through transnational infrastructure and the expansion of regional markets.
“Given the bank’s strength and Africa’s needs, the next phase of the AfDB Group is to take development to the nooks and corners of Africa, through inclusive growth that transforms the lives of the urban and rural populations of Africa,” says Adesina.
It is a plan the board of governors of the bank appear to have bought and that will be tested over the next five years, as Africa’s growth shifts from being externally driven to leveraging off the increasing power of African consumers and economies that have made Africa, alongside India, as the only regional nodes of economic expansion in the world this year.

The Man With Africa On His Shoulders

It is like running in the Olympic Games with a limping leg, no matter the obstacles; you need to reach the finish line. This is an attitude portrayed by Kenya in the aftermath of the Westgate terror attack. An attack that got many wondering if Nairobi will stand tall to face this evil and, more importantly, resolutely look forward and never turn back, as echoed by the number one citizen, Uhuru Kenyatta.
Kenya is still licking its wounds after one of the deadliest terror attacks the world has ever witnessed in September, 2013. Just a few days before that, the country’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport became an inferno. It was not clear if this was an act of terror or arson until a month later when the investigation revealed an electrical fault started the fire.
That is when the Hakuna Matata aura kicked in; all that happened is history and life moves on. Millions of foreign visitors, on leisure and business trips, are landing at that very same airport and more shopping malls are springing up. The Kenyan government even promised to lend a hand in revamping the Westgate Mall.
Focus quickly shifted to mark Kenya’s 50th anniversary as an independent state. The year was coming to an end and there was a rush to wrap it up with a lot of festivities. On the night of December 2, FORBES AFRICA chose the country’s capital to celebrate its third Person of the Year, less than three kilometers away from the scene of terror that occurred at the mall. The recipient of the award, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture, Akinwumi Adesina, reminded all that East Africa, and Kenya in particular, is at the forefront of the continent’s ICT revolution.
During his acceptance speech, Adesina reiterated his mission to make millionaires from agriculture. He is using electronic wallets to enable farmers to receive vouchers for subsidized seeds and fertilizers. It is a system that traces its origin from Kenya, a land with no worries.
Exclusive resorts and the world’s top luxury hotels are setting up shop in Kenya. Africa’s first Billionaires Resort was opened in the tiny coastal town of Malindi, a three-hour drive north of Mombasa. Some of the resort’s investors cannot even point out the location on a map. All their trust is bestowed on their beloved friend and Italian businessman, Flavio Briatore, who operates the resort, bringing glamour, quality and uniqueness to the coast of Kenya. Some of the high-profile owners of apartments at the resort include Ferrari’s Spanish Formula One driver Fernando Alonso and former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
It is once again time for the Hakuna Matata mojo.

5E9V8829

THE PAST IS THE PAST AS KENYA STANDS STRONG

<ol>
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<h4>Akinwumi Adesina</h4>
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<h4>Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development</h4>
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Akinwumi Adesina is a man on a mission. As Nigeria’s minister of agriculture and rural development since 2011, his methodologies have rejuvenated and elevated a once comatose sector into an emerging economic El Dorado.
Once renowned for its peanut pyramids, cocoa, timber and oil palm exports, the last time Nigeria took agriculture seriously was in the 1950s, around the same time the country discovered crude oil.
Adesina is currently unleashing a positive shake-up on Nigeria’s agriculture ecosystem. His purposeful and transparent leadership has changed Nigeria’s agriculture governance, cleansing the Augean stables, attracting much needed investments and effectively reversing the social economics of the sector.
“I am a minister on a mission,” he told FORBES AFRICA in Abuja, Nigeria’s administrative capital.
“Our farmers have waited for too long for people to develop ways of creating wealth for them, and I am determined to unlock the enormous potential of agriculture in Nigeria.”
Unlocking that trapped potential has meant changing the perception of the sector as a development case and dumping the sector’s bad habits. Nigeria currently imports one billion naira worth of rice daily—that’s almost $2.5 billion annually—and even as the largest producer of citrus in Africa, and number two after China globally, it still buys citrus fruit and concentrate from around the world.
These acquired tastes for foreign foods showcase the opportunity and biotechnology gaps in the sector, which was worth $99 billion in 2012. Adesina believes he can grow Nigerian agriculture into a $230 billion wealth generator over the next five years and has embarked on a tropical wheat and rice revolution. The aim is to reduce Nigeria’s wheat bill by 50% and make Africa’s hungriest nation self-sufficient in rice by 2015. Many do not believe this is achievable.
Adesina is undaunted. He argues that there is plenty of space for expansion. Not more than 10% of Nigeria’s 84 million hectares landmass is optimally cultivated. For the first time in a while, Nigeria’s food import bill declined by $5.4 billion in 2012, far exceeding the set target of $2.2 billion. His Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA) last year alone created 2.7 million jobs, added 9 million tons of additional crop output to current production levels and galvanized $4.8 billion into the economy.
“Agriculture is big business and my goal is to make as many millionaires, maybe even billionaires, in the long-term from agriculture as possible,” he says
“My vision for Nigeria’s agriculture sector is that we will use agriculture to produce stupendous amount of wealth; that the sector will be as productive, as efficient and competitive like that of Brazil and others… My dream is that we will become an agriculturally industrialized economy.”
He has curbed the endemic scam of fertilizer allocation and distribution in Nigeria. Faceless cabals in government had previously controlled and mismanaged agricultural subsidies.
“We ended the corruption of 40 years in exactly 90 days. I took the government totally out of the buying and selling of fertilizers; now it’s all private sector driven,” says Adesina.
He reckons that almost $4.9 billion of the over $5.4 billion spent subsidizing fertilizer between 1980 and 2012 has not been accounted for.
“Only 11% of fertilizers bought ever got to the farmers,” he says.
Most of Nigeria’s farmers now have electronic wallets, a scheme which allows them to access fertilizer information and supplies via their mobile phones.
Africa’s most populous nation has certainly benefited from Adesina’s professional acuity, experience and passion for change. He has put his global network and solid grasp of agriculture dynamics at his country’s disposal, helping to lay a solid foundation for Nigeria’s food production value chain. In retrospect, his appointment was a turning point for Nigerian agriculture. He knew that the absence of farmers’ records was antithetical to his big, audacious plans, so barely a few days on the job he promptly embarked on a nationwide farmers registration exercise.
“For decades Nigeria kept spending billions of naira on farmers that it didn’t know. Now, Nigeria is the first country in Africa to have a full biometric database of its farmers,” he says.
Around 15 million farmers have been captured on the database so far. Agriculture currently accounts for 44% of the national GDP.
Asked how he felt on being shortlisted for the FORBES AFRICA Person of the Year, he replied: “I was quite humbled by my nomination. It shows that FORBES AFRICA recognizes that value is more than money, that agriculture’s place in the country has changed forever, and that the most important thing about public service is the impact that we bring to the lives and livelihoods of millions of people… so the magazine’s recognition of that is exciting for me as a person. I am not a billionaire but I can certainly help to make others millionaires and billionaires&#8230;”
Adesina’s resume reveals his intellectual wealth and global positioning. He won the Rockefeller Foundation Social Science Research Fellowship in 1988, thereafter going to work and consult for some of the foremost agricultural institutions in the world. A globally recognized agriculture expert, he received a bachelor’s degree in agricultural economics with first-class honors from the University of Ife, Nigeria, in 1981, and his PhD degree in agricultural economics in 1988 from Purdue University, USA, where he won an award for his research work. In 2009, he was appointed by the United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon as one of the 17 global leaders to spearhead the Millennium Development Goals. He remains an adviser to several international development agencies and African governments.
Adesina has revived trust and global confidence in the ability of Nigeria’s agriculture sector to fuel economic growth. As Nigerian banks queue to lend to Nigerian farmers using the government-backed Growth Enhancement Scheme (GES), international financial institutions have posted around $2 billion to support Adesina’s initiatives this year. The sector has also attracted $8 billion of private sector funds over the last two years.
“That covers fertilizer manufacturing, seed companies, food processing firms and so on… it’s never happened in Nigeria or in the history of any African country,” he says.
A new dawn has arrived on the door steps of Nigerian agriculture.

Tag: Akinwumi Adesina