Nigeria’s Minister Dr. Akinwumi Adesina Wins Forbes Africa Person of the Year - 2013

Nigeria’s Minister Dr. Akinwumi Adesina Wins Forbes Africa Person of the Year - 2013

Nigeria’s Minister for Agriculture, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, was awarded the prestigious Forbes Africa Person of the Year defeating four other prestigious nominees for this continent wide prize.
"I am truly honoured and humbled by this prestigious award, which I dedicate to Africa's farmers and the new cadre of young business entrepreneurs who have discovered the hidden gem for sustainable wealth creation on our continent - Agriculture,” said Adesina. “With dwindling oil fortunes, and the end of the telecoms boom, the next big investment frontier is unlocking Africa's vast agricultural potential to feed the continent and the world".
Adesina who was nominated for his bold reforms in Nigeria’s agriculture sector has empowered more than six million farmers across Nigeria to embrace agriculture as a business. A passionate defender of African farmers, Adesina is relentless in unlocking opportunities for farmers and changing Africa's narrative on agriculture to wealth creation, away from poverty reduction.
Within two years of his taking office, Adesina turned agriculture away from being a development program into a business activity generating wealth for millions of farmers.
“Africa, with our huge potential, cannot be a museum of poverty” he said.  “My passion is using agricultural business and finance innovations to turn Nigerian and African farmers and agribusinesses into millionaires and billionaires. Nigeria must become a global powerhouse in agriculture".
His Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GES) ended four decades of corruption in the fertilizer sector, eliminating the middlemen and scaling up food production by nine million metric tonnes in the first year -almost half of the 2015 production target.  To further enhance this process, he introduced an Electronic Wallet System which allows smallholder farmers to receive electronic vouchers for subsidized seeds and fertilizers directly on their mobile phones and enable them to pay for farm inputs from private sector agricultural input dealers.
The system has reached over 6 million farmers and enhanced food security for 30 million persons in rural farm households. Women farmers, previously marginalized under the old fertilizer distribution system, now have better yielding fields with subsidized farm inputs received on their mobile phones. Chairperson of Nigerian Women Farmers Association Mrs Lizzy Igbine, said of the Minister "We have never seen any Minister who works so hard to improve our lives. He has returned dignity to us as farmers".
With the success of the electronic wallet system, Nigeria has become the first country in Africa to reach farmers with subsidized farm inputs through their mobile phones. The impact is already being noticed beyond Nigeria with several African countries, Brazil, India and China now expressing interest in adopting the electronic wallet system in their agriculture sectors.
Adesina has championed African agriculture for over two decades, defending the poor and helping several African countries to develop innovative solutions for reaching millions of farmers with finance, farm inputs and supportive policies.
In recognition of Nigeria’s reforms and progress, global and domestic investors have signed over USD 4 billion of executed letters of investments to boost Nigeria's agriculture. The World Bank, African Development Bank and other global development finance institutions have put up over USD 2 billion in support of his bold initiatives.
"Adesina has totally revolutionized agriculture into a business, and banks and private investors are all moving to the agriculture sector. He has made agriculture very exciting, turning it into Nigeria's new oil" said Tony Elumelu, Chairman of Heirs Holdings.
Often referred to as 'Africa's leading development entrepreneur', he was appointed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon as one of the 17 global leaders, along with Bill Gates, to help the world to achieve the Millennium Goals. Bill Gates, who sits on the Eminent Persons Group that advises President Goodluck Jonathan on Nigeria's agriculture, called Adesina's policies and reforms of agriculture "extraordinary".
Sharing his vision for a food secured continent, Adesina said he dreams of a future where Africa’s vast savannas are revived with crops, where large commercial and smallholder farmers co-exist and both prosper. Where rail, road and port systems are improved. Where open international markets enable more food to move from places of surplus to places of need. Where rising incomes bring millions of farmers into Africa’s emerging middle class.
“The results achieved in Nigeria could not have been possible without the immense support of Nigeria's President, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. His passion and leadership inspires us that we can achieve even greater results. For agriculture was Nigeria's past and in agriculture - as a business - lies Nigeria's greater future,” Adesina added.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

PLANT NURSERY, DEFINITION, TYPES AND MANAGEMENT

Image
Definition of nursery Nursery is a place where plants are grown, nurtured and sold out. Generally, various commercial crop growers require a good quality saplings or grafts of genuine type. Types of Nurseries  Nurseries are categorized in different ways.  I. According to time duration nurseries are classified in two types:  1) Temporary nursery – This type of nursery is developed only to fulfill the requirement of the season or a targeted project. The nurseries for production of seedlings of transplanted vegetables and flower crops are of temporary nature. Like wise temporary arrangement for growing forest seedlings for planting in particular area can also be done in temporary nursery.  2) Permanent nursery – This type of the nursery is placed permanently so as to produce plants continuously. These nurseries have all the permanent features. The permanent nursery has permanent mother plants. The work goes on continuously all the year round in this ...
Read more

Financial Services To Villages Achievable In 2020 – CBN Governor

The Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr Godwin Emefiele on Thursday said plans to render financial services to villages across the country by the end of 2020 are on top gear just as it reiterate it commitment to a cashless society. Mr Godwin who made the disclosure at a two-day CBN fair tagged “Promoting Financial Stability and Economic Development” said the CBN now has a Central Complaints Center where customers can present their challenges and it will be resolved immediately. Represented by the Benin Branch Controller, Mr R.D Jumbo, the CBN governor said it became pertinent to sensitize the people on their rights and duties as a customer urging participants to be dedicated in preaching the gospel of the apex bank of actualizing a full cashless society by the year 2020. According to him, “The banking sector has improved to the extent that you can buy and transfer money with your phone. You can use your ATM to pay for goods in shops through POS. He said the programme ...
Read more

HEALTH BENEFITS OF FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

Image
Health Benefits of Fruits and Vegetables 1 Joanne L. Slavin 2 , * and    Beate Lloyd 3   Author Affiliations 2 Department of Food Science and Nutrition, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN; and 3 PepsiCo Nutrition, Global Research and Development, PepsiCo, Valhalla, NY ↵ * To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: jslavin@umn.edu .                      Abstract Fruits and vegetables are universally promoted as healthy. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 recommend you make one-half of your plate fruits and vegetables. Myplate.gov also supports that one-half the plate should be fruits and vegetables. Fruits and vegetables include a diverse group of plant foods that vary greatly i...
Read more