• As Egypt’s non-oil business activity contraction slows slightly -PMI

Dr Akinwumi Adesina, the President of African Development Bank (AfDB), says the bank and World Bank have set aside 800 million dollars for the provision of agriculture technologies to farmers in Africa.

He made this known at the ongoing 2017 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) on Wednesday in Abidjan, made available to Press in Abuja.

According to him, the financial support will come under a flagship programme for scaling up of agriculture known as “Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation”.

The AfDB boss noted that the technologies to feed Africa exist already, but need to be scaled up for widespread adoption because it required specific incentives.

He added that “agriculture is instrumental in Africa’s poverty and it must be instrumental in its wealth but only through agricultural regeneration.

“No region of the world has ever industrialised without the agriculture sector being first transformed,’’ he said.

Adesina said the future of Africa depended on agriculture and required 40 billion dollars yearly over the next 10 years.

He, however, added that “it is a lot of money, but it is available, even within Africa, if the projects are good enough.

“We must bring an end to the costly and damaging anomaly of the net deficit in food. No more should Africa produce what it does not or cannot consume, and no more should it consume what it does not but could easily produce.”

He disclosed that AfDB was promoting national risk sharing facilities in every country to leverage agricultural finance, similar to the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL).

NIRSA is a facility designed to reduce the risk of lending to Nigerian agriculture value chains.

“The impact in Nigeria was massive because 15 million farmers were reached in four years, 2.5 million of them women, while food production expanded by over 21 million tonnes.

“Today, several African countries are adopting the approach, as well as others such as Afghanistan.”

Adesina predicted that the next few years would see agriculture emerge fully from poverty and subsistence to become the next big booming business sector of Africa.

He said “Africans need to become producers and creators, and not just consumers, in the fast-moving enterprising business of food.

“I am confident that we will soon see Africa’s first tranche of billionaires coming from the farming and food sectors.”

In the meantime, Egypt’s non-oil private sector business activity shrank in August at the slowest pace since July last year amid decline in new orders and a jump in exports, a survey showed on Wednesday.

The Emirates NBD Egypt Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the non-oil private sector rose to 48.9 in August from 48.6 a month before but remained below the 50 mark that separated growth from contraction.

Output continued to decline in August, but improved from the previous month, with the related sub index standing at 48.8, compared with 47 in July, the survey showed.

New orders declined in August, reaching 49.5 from 50 the previous month, when it briefly ended a 21-month trend of decline.

For the fifth month in a row, new exports rose, with the sub-index climbing to 53.7 from 50.3 in July, as the Egyptian pound remained weak.

Egyptian exports have gained new markets since the central bank liberalised the exchange rate in November as part of a 12 billion dollars International Monetary Fund reform programme.

The pound has lost half its value since the float.

The economy has been struggling to recover since a 2011 uprising scared investors away, two main sources of foreign currency.

The three-year IMF programme is expected to help restore confidence in the North African country.

“Egypt’s PMI improved further in August, although it remains in contraction territory at 48.9.

”New orders declined only marginally after stabilising in July and new export orders increased at the fastest rate since May,” said Khatija Hague, head of MENA Research at Emirates NBD.

Hague expected the inflation rate to remain high in August as a result of the hike in electricity prices.

Egypt has raised fuel and electricity prices in an effort to cut its gaping budget deficit as agreed with the IMF.