The President of African Development Bank, Mr. Akinwunmi Adesina, has urged African leaders to develop the Agricultural sector, saying it would make industries strive and create more jobs.
He made this known during an interview on Channels Television’s Business Morning on Wednesday.
Adesina, who was also a Minister of Agriculture, during the Jonathan Presidency said, “Africa must industrialise its Agricultural sector. If you look at the cocoa today, Africa produces 75 per cent of all the cocoa beans in the world.
“But the size of the chocolate market is $100bn and Africa’s share of that market is only two per cent. It makes no sense and so, the price of cocoa you know will always decline whenever the price of chocolate and the price of cotton that we produce a lot of lot of it decline.
“But never will the price of textile or garments or the price of coffee but you are also a big producer of will find it decline. Have you ever been to Starbucks and they tell you that the price of brewed coffee has actually gone down?” he questioned.
Reiterating his call for the continent to revamp its Agricultural sector, he added, “What we got to do is to actually industrialise the Agricultural sector. I am a firm believer in the fact that the time to do that is now.
“If you look at Nigeria where I come from, you take a look at the North of the country where we have a lot of security challenges, you look at the Northern Kenya and Mali where they have a lot of problems, what do you have in common?
“What we have in common is what I call a triangle of disaster. And a triangle of disaster basically is, whenever you find it following three factors you have terrorists operating, first extreme rural poverty.
“Second, you also have high level of rural employment among young people. You also have areas where you have climate and environmental degradation. Anywhere you find these three factors I call disaster triangle, you also find terrorists operating.
