The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced its wealth creation plan for Nigeria and 12 other African nations by building youth entrepreneurship investment banks. ayokinews.com reports
Speaking on the plan, AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina said: “We are designing renewed financial institutions that will invest into the business of the youths, and Ghana is one of the benefitting countries.
“We have 13 countries, and we expect to finish that design by the end of June. It will create youths based wealth for the continent.”
He listed Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritius, and Mozambique, among the other African countries to benefit from the development.
Adesina stated this while speaking at a press conference in Accra, Ghana, to wrap off the bank’s 2022 Annual Meetings.
He revealed that the bank (AfDB) has so far invested $1 billion in specific agro-industrial processing zones to reduce post-harvest losses.
“These are the new investments the bank is making to be close to the areas that the farmers are producing enabled with water, infrastructure, and logistics so that the food and agriculture processing companies can be located close to the zones.
Read: Nigeria’s GDP improves by 3.11% in Q1 2022
“The processing companies in most countries are not located in the rural areas because there are no infrastructures in the rural areas.
“What we are trying to do with the processing zones is to reduce the cost of doing business for the food and agriculture companies so that they can offtake from the farmers and process them there,” he said.
The AFDB president decried the fact that Africa loses a lot of food yearly, citing concerns about carbon emissions, production without effect, and price spikes.
“Post-harvest losses is what I can describe as pouring water into a bucket that has holes, you have to stop the leakage but in developed countries, post-harvest losses is as a result of too much food, you can’t eat it, you throw it away but in Africa, it is not like that,” he said.
The AfDB’s next annual meeting will be hosted by Egypt.
Tarel Amer, the governor of the Arab Republic of Egypt’s Central Bank, has now been named the next head of the AfDB Board of Governors.
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