‘Africa’s agricultural production will reach $1 trillion annually by 2030’

The African Development Bank (AfDB) has stated that, with the removal of barriers to agricultural development with the help of new investment, Africa’s agricultural production could increase from $280 billion per year to $1 trillion by 2030.

AfDB President Akinwumi Adesina, in a statement to announce the Dakar II summit scheduled for January 25 at the Abdou Diouf International conference center in Diamniadio, Dakar, the capital of Senegal, said now is the time to invest on the future of Africa, noting that the continent has more than 60 percent of the world’s remaining arable land, and millions of Africans are productive in the agricultural sector.

He stressed that the continent is home to a third of the world’s 850 million people who live with hunger, and assured that the Dakar II Summit will mobilize political commitment, development partners and private sector investment, establish policies very necessary and will strategically promote actions to comply with scale.

“This historic event will be a turning point towards food sovereignty and resilience for the entire continent. The International Fund for Agricultural Development, the Islamic Development Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa and various bilateral partners are among those international sponsors of the summit. added.

He said the summit is at the heart of the bank group’s Feed Africa strategy, one of the bank’s 5 priority areas to help African countries significantly increase agricultural growth, adding that the summit is a follow-up to the inaugural edition of 2015. , during which the Feed Africa Strategy for Agricultural Transformation (2016-2025) in Africa was proposed.

During the summit, heads of state and government are expected to convene sessions to develop transformative country-specific food and agriculture delivery pacts, while development partners and the private sector will also play an important role during the sessions. and the summit in general.

African countries are also expected to make measurable political commitments to implement policies designed to eliminate extreme poverty, hunger and malnutrition in Africa.

AfDB Vice President for Agriculture Dr Beth Dunford said the bank will provide specific roadmaps towards self-reliance and provide interventions that will make Africa’s agricultural sector more business-oriented and commercially viable.

“The summit will be the one-stop-shop for African countries seeking more and better investment enabled by the public sector and led by the private sector,” Dunford said.

The gathering will showcase programs already contributing to Africa’s food sovereignty and resilience. This includes the African Development Bank’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) platform, which is delivering high-yielding heat-tolerant wheat, drought-tolerant maize and rice seeds to 11 million African farmers in 21 countries.

For his part, the AfDB’s director of Agriculture and Agribusiness, Dr. Martin Fregene, said that TAAT will produce an additional 100 million metric tons of food to feed 200 million people.

He said: “We know what works in Africa. Scaling up agricultural technology programs like TAAT does more than increase agricultural production. Increase wealth, create jobs and open our markets to regional and international trade. It is essential to support these efforts. Africa will benefit, the world will benefit, from such a concerted effort.”

Positive streak will remain in the stock market this week

The positive streak is expected to continue in the Nigerian stock market this week, writes OLUSHOLA BELLO.

Nigerian capital market analysts said positive sentiment will remain in stocks this week as investors lean towards financials and other defensive stocks.

Analyst optimism

Analysts at Cordros Securities Limited said: “In the coming weeks, we expect the NGX to be flooded with corporate earnings as more companies release audited numbers for the full year 2022, which will be accompanied by dividend declarations.

“We think this should provide a catalyst for buying activities, even as risk-averse investors are likely to remain cautious given medium-term expectations of a rebound in FI yields. In general, we advise investors to seek trading opportunities only in fundamentally justified stocks, as the weak macroeconomic story remains a significant drag on corporate earnings.”

Analysts at Afrinvest Limited noted that “this week, we expect the positive streak to continue due to improving investor confidence.”

Heading into the new week, Cowry Assets Management Limited expected mixed sentiment and portfolio rebalancing amid fixed income rate divergence and benchmark rate adjustment to 17.50%, on expectations of fourth quarter (Q4) earnings and election uncertainty. as the pullback at this point adds more strength to the upside potential.

However, we continue to advise investors to trade shares of companies with strong fundamentals,” he said.

Business activities last week

Stock trading last week started lower on mixed signals from technical indicators as investor reactions to full-year corporate earnings remained strong despite excess liquidity in the income space. fixed, as exposed by the oversubscriptions recorded in the Nigerian Treasury’s term indicators. Bills on offers at the PMA last Wednesday despite low rates.

To this end, increased buying interest and mixed sentiment in some important market sectors, despite the seemingly fluctuating position of the index stock, may continue to provide clear direction as more companies release their scorecards.

Thus, the reference index closed 0.12 percent week by week at 52,657.88 points. Similarly, the market capitalization gained N34 billion to close the week at N28.681 billion.

Across all sectors last week, sentiment was largely positive for most indices except the Consumer Goods Index, which lost 1.09 percent week-over-week.

On the other hand, momentum buying price appreciation was seen in the NGX Bank Index with a weekly gain of 1.65 percent. The NGX Oil & Gas Index rose 1.73%, while the NGX Insurance and NGX Industrial Goods Indexes rose 0.77% and 0.37%, respectively.

Market breadth for the week was positive as 44 shares increased in price, 29 shares depreciated in price, while 84 shares remained unchanged. Tripple Gee and Company led the winners’ chart by 31.25 per cent to close at N1.05 per share. International Energy Insurance followed with a gain of 28.57% to close at 63 kobo, while Chellarams rose 23.97% to close at N1.81 per share.

On the other hand, CWG led the decline chart by 13.46 percent to close at 90 kobo per share. Nigerian Breweries followed with a loss of 9.69 per cent to close at N41.95, while Thomas Wyatt Nigeria declined 9.66 per cent to close at N1.31, per share.

Overall, investors traded a total turnover of 756.769 million shares worth N13.653 billion in 18,248 deals on the floor of the Exchange last week, in contrast to a total of 1.241 billion shares valued at N15. ,668 billion that exchanged hands. previous week in 18,560 offers.

The financial services industry (measured by volume) led the activity chart with 454.718 million shares valued at N4.813 billion traded in 8,214 deals; contributing 60.09 percent and 35.26 percent to the volume and total value of capital turnover, respectively.

The ICT industry followed with 61.735 million shares worth N1.647 billion in 1,600 deals, while the conglomerate industry traded a turnover of 56.842 million shares worth N119.141 million in 622 deals.

Trade in the top three stocks; FBN Holdings (FBNH), Guaranty Trust Holding Company (GTCO) and Fidelity Bank (measured by volume) accounted for 165.522 million shares worth N2.320 billion in 2,530 trades, contributing 21.87% and 16 .99% to the volume and total value of capital turnover respectively.