The African Development Bank (AfDB) will invest 24 billion dollars. The United States in agricultural agriculture for the next 10 years to pull out a billion people from hunger all over the world.
Akinvumi Adesina, president of AfDB, who reported this on Wednesday at a conference on agriculture at Purdue University in Indianapolis, called on global partners to unite to raise a million people around the world from hunger.
The report, which was released in the Information Agency of Nigeria (NAS) in Abuja, told that this fund is the largest of such efforts.
The president of the bank stressed that everyone should unite to fight the war.
He noted that the last five UN agency statistics on food security and nutrition showed a decline in the world's population living on less than two dollars a day.
Mr. Adezina, however, said that statistics actually show that the number of hungry people in the world has increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016.
The bank leader warned the interested parties not to get carried away, because they did not win the war against the global hunger.
He told the audience, including researchers, executing organizations, business leaders, policy makers and donors, that simple technical and scientific methods already affect the yield and profitability of agriculture in Africa.
"While such technologies exist to ensure a green revolution in Africa, they basically just sit on the shelves.
"The release of water-saving maize varieties now allows farmers to get good harvests in conditions of moderate drought.
"Today there are varieties of rice that can yield a yield of 8 tons per hectare; varieties of cassava exist with a yield of up to 80 tons per hectare.
"In addition, there are resistant to heat and disease-causing livestock and technologies for increasing aquaculture," he said.
Mr. Adzina said that the deployment of a support policy is urgently needed to ensure that technologies are cascaded to millions of farmers.
"All Africa needs to do this in order to use the available technology with the right policies and to quickly improve agricultural productivity and incomes for farmers and provide lower food prices for consumers.
He said that the bank launched its initiative on technologies of African agricultural transformation (TAAT) worth 1 billion US dollars to expand the use of farming technologies.
Mr. Adesina said that at present TAAT is attracting seed companies, public and private companies and financial institutions in 27 countries to ensure the availability of technology to 40 million African farmers.
He said that the situation in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly in need of urgent intervention because of the devastating effects of climate change.
According to him, the recent report of the International Institute for Food Policy Research has calculated that by 2050 Africa will add 38 million to the number of hungry people as a result of climate change.
"The Institute also predicts that by 2020, Africa will experience a significant food shortage, and malnutrition will grow over the next 20 years.
(NAN)
