By Fatima Saka
The President of the African Development Bank Group, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina revealed that the Ukraine, Russia crisis has had a major significant impact on Africa’s economy while citing that Ukraine supplies Africa with 41% of its wheat.
This he revealed at Webinar, over the weekend in Dublin, hosted by the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA) and Irish Aid.
The theme of the meeting was, “The Role of the African Development Bank in Realising the Economic Opportunity of Africa”.
Speaking on, Adesina expressed that every week there is no food when you look at Ukraine, a small country though, a supply study showed that Ukraine is one of the main inputs for Africa.
“All the sales of food supply come from these two countries, the war in Russia and Ukraine has major constraints and significant impact in Africa”, he stated.
He further added that for instance maize and soya and wheat coming in from those two countries, however, “in Africa, this year, there will not be 30 million metric tons in Russia and Ukraine because of the ongoing crisis”.
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Adding that other constraints issues of fertilizer revealed that Africa will not be getting a million metric tons of fertilizer coming from these countries.
Adesina emphasized on the productivity of existing cultivated land in Africa will decline by anything between 20 and 50%. So you have a reduction in your productivity on existing land.
“So whichever way you look at both of those two things, that combination of those two factors will lead to a looming crisis”, he stated.
Given the instance of COVID-19 that the Group responded very quickly and launched a $10 billion facility. So 14 countries including, by the way, that $3,000,000,000.05 COVID-19, this further extended capital markets, which were at the time, the largest.
Adesina said that a fast response is needed at this time, that is why the group is launching a $1.5 billion African emergency food production plant to help Africa to produce and compensate for what he’s not going to be getting from this.
The $1.5 billion emergency food production facility will allow Africa to produce 38 million metric tons of food for two years forces, which will provide technologies in the hands of 20 million farmers with climate-resilient agricultural technologies that will produce 38 million metric tons of food, largely going to be wheat will be 11 million metric tons of wheat.
Therefore, he stated that 18 million metric tons of 6 million metric tons of rice and 2.5 billion metric tons of soya beans will be enough to mitigate any likely impact that is in Africa.
Dr. Adesina revealed that Africa needs seeds in the ground to produce food by itself, that Africa needs to show in solving global challenges, how to fully unlock the potential of its agricultural sector, and become a major food supplier to meet the food needs in the world.
