The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced that it will fund $1 billion to enhance wheat production in Africa in order to avoid food shortages as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The African Development Bank’s president, Akinwumi Adesina, stated that the fund would assist 40 million African farmers in adopting climate-resilient technology and increasing the output of heat-tolerant wheat types and other crops.
“We’re going to aggressively crank up our attempts to mobilize that money,” Adesina said, according to Bloomberg Quint.
“If there was ever a time when we needed to dramatically increase food production in Africa for Africa’s food security and to reduce the impact of this war-related food disaster, now is the time.”
Wheat imports, he claims, account for over half of Africa’s $4 billion commerce with Russia and nearly half of its $4.5 billion trade with Ukraine.
According to Adesina, the dangers are most great in Africa, where 283 million people were already starving before the war began.
However, for Nigeria, where wheat is the third most consumed grain, the war’s prolongation could be disastrous.
Nigeria purchased durum wheat and mackerel worth N88.46 billion and N30.69 billion, respectively, from Russia by the end of Q3 2021, according to NBS data.
According to the African Development Bank, the objective is to expand wheat, rice, soybeans, and other crop output to feed roughly 200 million Africans.
Adesina announced that he will convene a meeting of the continent’s finance and agriculture ministers to examine the best ways to fund it.
