-Address delivered President Goodluck Jonathan at the Rockefeller Foundation Summit on Realizing the
Potential of African Agriculture, in Abuja, Nigeria on July 8, 2013.
It is with great personal joy that I welcome our distinguished guests to this very critical Summit. I would like to commence by paying special tribute to the Rockefeller Foundation, an organization which has done more to support scientific research than any other foundation in the world.
The vision of John D. Rockefeller to improve the lives and livelihoods of people around the world was, and remains, a noble one. It is on record that, since its establishment 100 years ago, the Foundation has remained faithful to its vision of building human capacity, institutions, and innovations for transforming the world.
From supporting the development of yellow fever vaccine, to the green revolution in agriculture in Asia, the Foundation has done so much to improve health and to feed the world.
Your Excellencies, Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, the Rockefeller Foundation richly deserves our commendation and congratulations on its centenary!
We are honored that the Foundation chose Nigeria to host this special occasion which is part of the activities to celebrate the Foundation’s centenary.
The Rockefeller Foundation is not a stranger to Nigeria. Indeed, it helped to build the foundations of our university education system, especially in medicine and agriculture. Many may not know that Rockefeller Foundation grants helped to support the establishment of the neuro-surgery facility at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria in 1962.
The Foundation also maintained a program office for Nigeria based at the University of Ibadan, from where scholars were awarded fellowships and grants in support of cutting edge research.
Today, we are here to discuss innovations in agriculture. The Rockefeller Foundation has been on the forefront of innovations in agriculture. In the 1960s, it sowed the seeds of research that led to the green revolution that transformed Asia and fed over a billion people. Dr. Norman Borlaug, a former staff of the Rockefeller Foundation, went on to win the first ever Nobel Prize for agriculture.
In Africa, unless we transform agriculture, our economies cannot grow, as millions of our people depend on agriculture for their livelihoods. The Foundation’s vision in supporting African agriculture, to help Africa feed itself, is noteworthy. The shift of focus in agriculture from Asia to Africa is both timely and welcome.
The partnership between the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2006, with a collective investment of $150 million, led to the creation of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), chaired by former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan.
As we embarked on our boldest effort ever to transform agriculture in Nigeria, I looked for a world class agricultural scientist to help us get the job done. I appointed Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, a former staff of the Rockefeller Foundation and Vice President of AGRA. Today, our agricultural sector is undergoing unprecedented transformation, with significant impacts.
My Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, who is working very well with my Administration’s Economic Management Team to reposition our economy, is a Board member of the Rockefeller Foundation. So, you see, the Rockefeller Foundation is having impacts right here in Nigeria.
The transformation of agriculture in Nigeria is a center piece of the economic transformation agenda of my government. Nigeria is known for oil. But today, many countries around the world have found oil. The recent discovery of Shale oil and gas means that we can no longer depend solely on oil to drive the economy. With abundant land and water resources, and an abundant vibrant labor force, Nigeria has all it takes to use agriculture as its new frontier for growth.
There is no reason why Nigeria should be a net food importing country. We should be a net food exporting country. That is why I launched the Agricultural Transformation Agenda in 2011 to unlock the potential of agriculture, and make agriculture the main driver of the economy – just like it used to be in the 1960s before we discovered oil.
We set out a bold plan to produce 20 million metric tons of food and create 3.5 million jobs through the agriculture sector by 2015. Today, the results achieved are impressive. Within the past one year, we have succeeded in producing an additional 9.1 million metric tons of food, which is 85% higher than the annual target of 5 million metric tons which we set for the country.
To reduce our dependency on rice imports, as the world’s largest importer of rice, we set out to make Nigeria self-sufficient in rice production by 2015. Ambitious as this goal seems, we are well on our way to achieving the target of rice-self-sufficiency. Dry season rice production in 2012/2013 unleashed a rice revolution across ten States in the northern parts of our country. Our farmers produced a record 1.1 million metric tons of paddy rice, which represents one third of the additional rice paddy we need to be self-sufficient in rice by 2015. Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, we are feeding Nigeria now!
As the world’s largest producer of cassava, we decided to become the world’s largest processor of cassava. To cut down our import of wheat, we embarked on a major innovation to use high quality cassava flour to replace some of the imported wheat flour.
Today, cassava bread, made out of composite flour, from 20% cassava and wheat flour have hit our markets. This alone will save Nigeria N 254 billion – well over $1.5 billion – in import bill on wheat and put this wealth in the pockets of our farmers. We are aggressively creating markets for use of cassava for starch, sweeteners and dry cassava chips.
Farmers, majority of who are smallholder women, are at the heart of our transformation of agriculture. To reach our farmers effectively with improved seeds and fertilizers, we turned to the power of mobile phones.
We developed the Electronic Wallet Scheme, which allows our farmers to receive electronic vouchers to redeem subsidized seeds and fertilizers from private sector seed and fertilizer companies and dealers.
I am pleased to note that Nigeria is the first country to develop such a scheme in Africa. Over 1.5 million farmers received their seeds and fertilizers via mobile phones in the first year. We ended four decades of corruption in the fertilizer sector, within 90 days of this government, and restored dignity back to Nigerian farmers. Our plan is to reach 10 million farmers, and impact 50 million persons, in the next two years, through the Electronic Wallet System.
The women especially are very excited that, for the first time, they are getting their fertilizers and seeds directly. I believe in our women farmers. When you empower women, you change the destiny of nations.
I am unwaveringly committed to the empowerment of the women of Nigeria; a fact made eloquently evident by the fact that over a third of my Ministers and Special Advisers are women, and our many job-creation initiatives targeted at women.
Our Administration’s successes in the agricultural sector were recognized on a global scale recently when, only last month, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) gave an award to Nigeria for ach
ieving the Millennium Development Goal on Hunger, for reducing the number of hungry people in the country. This milestone was achieved 3 years ahead of the 2015 target date set for the Millennium Development Goals!
While we are delighted at this recognition, we know our job is only done when not one Nigerian goes to bed hungry.
To drive our agriculture, we have ended the approach of agriculture as a development program. We now treat agriculture as a business. Private sector investments are expanding rapidly, from seeds and fertilizer companies and agro-processors. In the last one year, over $8 billion of private investment commitments have been made to the sector.
We developed Staple Crop Processing Zones, to attract the private sector to invest in rural areas, to process and add value to all of our crops. This will reduce post-harvest losses and create jobs.
The adverse effects of climate change have presented challenges to our efforts. Last year, we witnessed devastating floods in many parts of the country. While providing immediate support to all those affected, we went into dry season food production to mitigate the impacts on our food supply. We recovered from the impact of the flood. Today, there is no food crisis, there is no famine.
To fully unlock the power of agriculture, farmers need affordable finance to invest in seeds, fertilizers and mechanized equipment. Small scale traders of farm inputs need credit to stock up on farm inputs. Agribusinesses need affordable long term finance to grow their businesses. This is why Nigeria developed new innovative finance approaches to expand access to finance to the agriculture sector.
The Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Agriculture developed the Nigerian Incentive Based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) to reduce risks of banks to the sector. The Ministry of Finance last year issued loan guarantee to cover 70% of all losses by banks. I was pleased to learn that of the total of N 3.2 billion lent by banks to agrodealers and seed companies in 2012, the default rate was zero percent. Investment in agriculture clearly does pay!
I would like to use this opportunity to thank my colleague Heads of State and Government, who are either present here today or have sent representatives, for gracing this important Summit with their esteemed presence.
Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, as you dialogue today, I urge you to develop innovative technologies and financing approaches that will increase access to finance for farmers and unlock the power of agriculture as a business, for millions of farmers across Africa. Africa should not be managing poverty with agriculture. Africa should be creating wealth from agriculture.
In Nigeria, we know that agriculture was our past. I am confident that with our renewed drive to transform agriculture, we will succeed in making agriculture our future.
As this Summit on Realizing the Potential of African Agriculture, with emphasis on Catalytic Innovations for Growth gets into top gear, I am confident that agricultural development in our continent is going to receive unprecedented boost.
While wishing the Rockefeller Foundation many more productive years in driving innovations to transform our world, I wish you all very successful deliberations.