Ebun Francis || DrAkinwumi Adesina, The president of African Development Bank and former Minister of Agriculture under Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan said that Alhaji Aliko Dangote, Africa’s richest man and President of Dangote Group is on course to become the largest exporter of rice in the world by the year 2021.
Rice farmers
The AFDB boss who spoke at the Mo Ibrahim forum in Nairobi, Kenya, urged African countries to pay more attention to agriculture as the springboard for growth and development in the continent.
“If they continue that policy, he would probably be the single largest producer of rice in the world, in about four years.
“The reason why I was so excited about that is that agriculture is cool, agriculture is a business and agriculture pays,” Adesina said.
It will be recalled that at the launch of Dangote growers scheme early in the year in Sokoto, Dangote said he said he decided to into rice cultivation because of government’s interest to revive agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, stating that the country consumes 6.5 million Metric tonnes of rice which costs the nation over two billion dollars annually.
He said then,“In the next three years, we want to produce one million tons of quality rice, make it available and affordable to the people.
“We hope to do 150, 000 hectares and when we are done, Nigeria will not have anything to do with importation of rice.”