Solving insecurity starts with creating jobs- Adesina, AfDB President

President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, says the sure way to reduce poverty and hunger is to deliberately enact policies that would institutionalise industrial processing zones to assist local and rural farmers in expanding. In this interview on Channels TV ‘Politics Today’ monitored by David Lawani, the former Nigerian Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development between 2011 and 2015, explains why insecurity has made food production difficult in Nigeria

As President of the AfDB, how has it been for you for over 10 years you have been in the saddle?

When I was elected president in 2015, of course, there was massive support from the then-president, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, who nominated me. Some confidence from the former president, Muhammadu Buhari, who was coming in at the time. It was undeniable that having been nominated by Jonathan, a new president was coming in, and my candidacy was in doubt. Honestly, the new president supported me, but I am grateful because ex-president Jonathan was the one who nominated me. The former president, Buhari, strongly supported my nomination, and I had the support of heads of state and my sister, Dr Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala. The then vice president, Atiku Abubakar, a former head of state, Abdul Salam Abubakar, former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, Dr Namadi Sambo, and, of course, Gen Ibrahim Babangida. I had support from everywhere, and I am saying that because I am somebody who recognises that you don’t make yourself. People supported you. And I recognised that I was not going there by myself. I was representing the collective of the nation. And I carried the pride all the time. I knew I was going to do that. I came to the bank about 10 years ago, and it was terrific. The first thing I told the staff of the bank and its board was that, look, this is not a job. I don’t have a job, but I have a mission. I could not think of anything more critical than to be given the resources and responsibility. The platform to advocate for and transform the continent of my birth. So, it is not a job but a mission. I plead every single day. The first thing I did was that we could accelerate and fastback Africa’s development. So, I started with my staff and my clear vision of high fives. How can we empower Africa, feed Africa, industrialise Africa, integrate Africa, and improve the quality of life of the people of Africa? Though simple, it was very comprehensive in the sense that I was pretty delighted that the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) did their independent assessment very early of these high five, and they said if Africa could achieve this high five, it would have achieved 90 per cent of the Sustainable Development Goals. So, we looked at it to fastback Africa, but when I look back today, 10 years after what we achieved, it is enormous. All these high fives in the last 10 years have impacted more than 50 million people. It includes connecting people to electricity and having 101 million people out of food insecurity. We have 121 million with improved access to transportation. One hundred twenty-seven million people have improved access to quality healthcare services. We have got 64 million people with access to water. Then, 38 million people had access to sanitation. When you look at the position we are in today, over 48 million people have access to digital services. So, I am tremendously proud of the work that we have done and the impact that we have had. But on the bank itself, when I was elected, the bank’s capital was $95bn; today, the bank’s capital is $300bn. So, you can imagine. We are a global bank today. Three years ago, multilateral and financial banks ranked the bank as the best. Two years ago, we were ranked the most transparent financial institution in the world; in fact, we got it in two years in a row. I feel tremendously proud that the bank has achieved so much. We are respected and have maintained our triple ratings among the rest of the bank. We have impacted the lives of the people around the continent. I feel so proud of our work and am grateful for all the trust and support I have been given.

Over the years, we have struggled with food insecurity, particularly its impact on food production. What is your experience with food insecurity, which we have grappled with for decades? What are the key challenges, and how do we manage them?

I was a Minister here for four years and was honoured to serve my country in that capacity. We did noble and the right things. When looking at food insecurity, it is that the abnormal should not be normal. It means you cannot have so much land and become a food-dependent country. That is an abnormal thing to have. My principle in doing anything in my life is to know what I hate or don’t like. And I do the opposite. It doesn’t have any economic model to it. It isn’t acceptable to have so much land with cheap labour, and people depend on agriculture, and we are in for food. We should not only produce the food but also export the food. So, as a minister, I realised there was a case, and we could not sustain it physically. There is no way that we will continue to import food. So, we launched a major programme, as you know, that transformed agriculture in this country. From the rice revolution you saw and the work we did to ensure we can grow many tuber crops, cassava, for example. Many people at that time worked very hard to achieve that. This thing people call cassava bread, and we were trying to make sure that people could use cassava flowers as composite flowers that we mix with wheat flowers today. Just look at any bread and the packaging, and you will see something called a white flower- nothing like a green or blue flower- a high-quality cassava flower. We have mainstreamed that into the supply chain. You can afford bread today, even though naira has been devalued. The point I am making is that you have to grow locally and consume locally to create a massive market for your people. One of the things that is also very important is simply access to technology. In an electronic world, we reach farmers with subsidised seeds and fertilisers. We have reached about 15 million farmers today. If you look at cases like Nigeria and Ethiopia, and looking at it from the AfDB, the model that I use here with Ethiopia, we provided the farmers with wheat tolerance varieties, and you know what they did? On just 5000 hectares last year, the total wheat for the areas covered was 2.2 million hectares. They grew this new variety over 6600 hectares, and in less than four years, they became self-sufficient in wheat. So, the point is that you need to have a policy. The political will to get out of food dependency. Technology and access to your farmers. That is for your farmers. You must ensure that your farmers are supported with agri-business that allows them to process everything they produce.

The challenge here is farmers having to pay to access their farms; what can be done?

There is nothing we can do. Security is critical. But we have to understand some of the drivers of insecurity. Insecurity doesn’t just happen overnight. One of the essential drivers for me was that when I was a minister, we witnessed a high level of structural poverty in rural areas. A high level of young unemployed people, and many of those are in rural areas. We create room for people like they say an idle hand is the devil’s workshop. Poverty and high levels of unemployment for young people have been a challenge, and of course, you find vast areas, in the case of Nigeria, have been affected by climate change. You take the whole of Lake Chad; it used to be 28 500 kilometres square. You have areas for grazing, slush land, areas for fisheries, and farmers could do a lot of things. Today, it is less than 2500 kilometres. It is a combination of climate change, structural poverty and lack of joblessness that has created this insecurity. If you slaughter a cow or a goat, and you have blood on the floor, and you have flies that are coming to it, you can’t take them off because they will keep coming, but when you wash the source of the problem, the flies will disappear. The approach to doing it is you need security, but it is not just Nigeria, by the way. I see this in several other countries. That we have to attack the drivers of insecurity. There is something I call a disaster triangle. I gave this name because you will find this triangle everywhere. You will find this kind think d of conflict. And for almost climate and environmental degradation. The second is that you have a high unemployment rate among young people. You have a high rate of poverty whether it is in northern Nigeria, the Horn of Africa or in the Sahel. Our work at the AfDB is always to continue to work and create opportunities for young people. You have to create opportunities for young people. You have to revive the rural areas; agriculture is the key if you don’t use agriculture to revitalise rural economies because 75 per cent of the people live there. How are you going to solve the problem? It is beyond food. It is part of our policy.

What are the impacts of Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone in the medium term, and what are the expectations? Where is it going in the next 10 to 50 years?

I am delighted that we are launching this Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone in Nigeria. This is a vision I had for a long time ago. First, farmers need to have markets, and when you have special agro-industrial processing, you are bringing the food and agro-businesses close to the rural areas where they are produced. Secondly, farmers are going to have markets. You will be able to stabilise the prices, and also because of the enabling culture you can have there. There will be a value chain of processing. It will not only support packaged foods but also be competitive domestically. You can also support the export of foods to the region; it will create vast amounts of jobs all across, and because you are transforming your rural economy from an area of misery to a new one of economic prosperity, you are back. You can also expand the physical space for the states that are involved. You have a whole range of opportunities there. Let me explain something that we did in Benin Republic. Benin exported many of their crops, like cashews, to Taiwan. But today, the Benin Republic has a hundred per cent of their cash crop production, which means we can earn 10 times more than what we are exporting. Take the whole issue of cotton. We are the largest producer of cotton. They have massive companies processing that cotton into textiles, garments, and all kinds of things worldwide, and they are making more value. These agro-industrial processing zones are technically to help build up and promote your value chain regionally and globally. It will allow you to earn more money from it. So, I am delighted for the one we are doing in Nigeria. We have committed more than $500m to Nigeria. We have eight states. We have been to Kaduna, Cross River, Kano, Katsina, Imo, Oyo, and Ogun states. We got the first sets of countries with the Islamic Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development. We are moving into the second phase because I want it to cover the whole of Nigeria. The second phase will consist of 28 states, including the FCT. You will have all these things across the country. We can take what you have and turn it into money.

How does it solve the insecurity that has stalled food production in this country?

For instance, when you have all of these zones, you will create massive amounts of jobs because many people who go into these criminal economies are unemployed because they don’t have jobs. That is not the economy that you want. But you have to realise that unless and until you deal with this issue of high-level poverty and unemployment in rural areas- the zones will bring new hope and economic opportunities to farmers. Every local government will see small and medium enterprises for young people. When the economy is developing based on agriculture, the whole process is easy. I can’t remember talking about insecurity when I was Minister of Agriculture. One of the ministers came into the meeting and said he used to be the number one supplier of night guards in Abuja and Lagos. But because of our massive agricultural production, the young people are busy all day. So, you have to keep people engaged, productive, and engaged. So, a lot of jobs are going to be done. This special industrial agro-processing will create thousands of jobs in any of these areas directly and indirectly. They will experience change around economic boom zones of economic misery, which many of them are today, and give them new hope of economic prosperity.

What measures are in place regardless of political vagaries and shifts whatsoever?

One of the things that we have done is talk with President Bola Tinubu. He has made the development of this industrial process a presidential initiative. This means it has a strong political will to continue carrying that out. So, I am delighted with his leadership skills. For this to work, I was a Minister of Agriculture. It is all about agriculture, fisheries, water trade and finance. I suffered from that before because I knew when I was a minister, we could work to ensure everybody was working collaboratively. It makes sense that everybody has that as a national strategic project because when the government says it wants to expand non-oil revenue, how do you grow it? You can turn agriculture into a mega business. That is important. Thirdly, it is a codification in law. I believe in it. It was a system that I developed to reach 15 million farmers. As Governor Uba Sani said in Kaduna, if this had continued, it would have continued to transform this country. This great thing needs to be codified in law. There has to be an Act of the National Assembly to institutionalise these things because investors are like pigeons. You do like this, and they are gone. You cannot continue on policy summersault- that is important- the coordination cost. We will have 36 of these, plus the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). I have advised the government to set up an agro-industrial processing zone that will coordinate all of these and make sure you are getting the right policies and having a one-stop shop in terms of people who are going to be coming from around the world to the factories- it makes it easy for them from Nigeria- the National Inland Revenue Service and all of that to streamline and make things easy for them. At the end of the day, I would also add the connection between the state and federal governments. In all these states that I mentioned, we have been working very well to ensure a good and fair relationship. You have all of this and could have codified them in law. And this actually will ensure there is no policy summersault.

Can Nigeria’s export processing authority mediate this sort of initiative?

When I was a Minister, we had this discussion. They are doing a great job, but export processing zones are when you bring in; I will give you free stuck-in raw material. You will process anything in those zones. That is what those things are meant to do. The agro-industrial processing zones are different. We are locating them in rural communities. They are to buy stuff from rural areas to add value, and they must be coordinated. You are all important; it is to make sure there are fertilisers and irrigations. There is infrastructure and commitment. A lot of companies are coming into rural areas and new zones. They need the incentive to make Nigeria produce a lot of food packaging. Everybody should always recognise that when you find yourself in government within a short time, you have a duty and responsibility to do the right thing that will structurally transform the economy. It will continue to boom in the future.