African finance ministers seek mega-financing deals to boost agriculture

African ministers of finance have stepped up campaign for additional financing to channel funding required to boosting production of rice and commercial farming in Africa.

This is according to a news release e-mailed to the News Agency of Nigeria weekend in Lagos.

The campaign, led by the African Development Bank (AfDB), will also enable the continent to become an exporter of food.

The campaign is featuring at the ongoing “Feeding African Conference’’ organised by the AfDB in Dakar, Senegal.

According to the report, the Ministers of Finance and Agriculture from the Republic of Guinea, Côte d’Ivoire, Senegal, Madagascar, Niger and Tanzania emphasised the need for the creation of an African agric-based financing facility.

They noted that such facility would oversee the channelling of adequate finance to the agriculture sector.

Ahoua N’Doli Théophile, director of Cabinet Affairs in the Office of the Prime Minister of Côte d’Ivoire, stressed on the viability of commercial agriculture in Africa.

“Major international firms are willing to set up agric-based business enterprises to process cocoa in Côte d’Ivoire, but required guarantees.

“We have understood the need for this financing facility in Côte d’Ivoire in a practical manner. We need finance to set up marketing infrastructure and the cost of marketing these products cannot be passed onto other sectors.

“We have companies that want to process cocoa for both domestic and international markets and have committed to invest in Côte d’Ivoire.

“Côte d’Ivoire is discussing the release of US $800 million with the AfDB to finance capital flows to the cocoa plantations,’’ Théophile was quoted as saying.

Roland Ravatomanga, Madagascar’s minister of agriculture, also proposed the need for a continental risk financing facility to aid agricultural investments in Africa.

He said commercial banks often resort to cancellation of loans to the agriculture sector whenever the demand increased.

Proposals to create an agricultural financing risk facility, a form of insurance agency for investors, equally featured prominently during discussions at the conference.

The discussions on food sufficiency and the agricultural markets continued with ministers expressing concern that failure to develop efficient marketing systems would affect food demand and supply in national and regional markets.

According to the discussants, those concerns are growing because most West African countries have set the goal of increasing the production of staple food crops.

Although the production is adequate to meet national demand and for the export markets, they said that there are fears of regional commodity excess.

Senegalese agriculture minister, Papa Abdoulaye Seck, said the concerns of agricultural commodity excess should not worry African countries, so long as opportunities to negotiate for fair trade regulations exist.

“The transformation of rice production in West Africa is a challenging issue. We can still determine our relationship with the Asian countries, which have been exporting rice to us and redefine trade,’’ Seck said.

According to the minister, statistics show Asian countries could become major importers of rice by 2020, which could benefit the African countries currently investing in rice production.

Seck advised the AfDB to invest in helping rice farmers reduce post-harvest losses, which, if successfully done, could reduce the import bills by 10 percent.