{"id":19885,"date":"2019-08-06T23:02:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-06T23:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=19885"},"modified":"2019-08-06T23:02:22","modified_gmt":"2019-08-06T23:02:22","slug":"at-meeting-with-chinese-investors-and-afdb-officials-osinbajo-says-nigeria-on-way-to-being-global-food-basket","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/?p=19885","title":{"rendered":"At meeting with Chinese investors and AfDB officials, Osinbajo says Nigeria on way to being global food basket"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Release<\/strong><br \/> \u00a0<br \/> \u25aa<strong>About $16B to $25B investment envisaged says AfDB<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media &amp; Publicity<br \/>\nOffice of the Vice President&nbsp;<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nIn line with its commitment to develop a thriving agro-industrial sector, the Federal Government will welcome partnerships and initiatives that would make Nigeria actualize its potential of being the food basket of the world, according to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, SAN.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nThe Vice President stated this on Tuesday when he received a delegation of Chinese investors and officials from the African Development Bank (AfDB), at the Presidential Villa.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nAccording to Prof. Osinbajo, \u201cI think that Nigeria is a place where there is tremendous opportunity. We have the 9th&nbsp;largest arable land in the world and most of that is still largely untouched.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\n\u201cWe have a tremendous potential of being the food basket of the world but a lot of that will depend on how we are able to get high quality inputs, seedling and others, and how we are able to use technology especially the benefits of industrial agriculture to our advantage.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nReferring to the interest of the Chinese investors in the agro-allied sector, the VP noted that \u201cwe believe very strongly that this partnership is the one that will deliver the kind of growth, the kind of quantum leap we are looking forward to. We think that with your partnership with us, especially the agro-allied aspect of it, if it works very well, we can achieve a lot.\u201d<br \/>\n&nbsp;<br \/>\nContinuing, Prof. Osinbajo said \u201cthis is the reason why we are engaging at this (presidential) level of government alongside the AfDB, to ensure that our investors have no trouble at all in being able to operate their businesses and do their businesses efficiently.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Chinese investors are in the country at the instance of the African Development Bank to commence the processes of investing in Nigeria\u2019s agricultural sector under an initiative known as the Agro-Industrial initiative with focus on crop production, forestry, fishery, and livestock production.&nbsp;&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Speaking earlier, Prof. Zhao Zhihai, the leader of the Chinese delegation, said a consortium of Chinese investors were committed to the development of Nigeria\u2019s agro-processing zones and especially the agro-allied sector.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In his own remarks, Prof. Oyebanji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, the head of the AfDB team at the meeting, said the framework of the initiative is to develop a programme that leverages Nigeria\u2019s comparative advantage in key areas of agricultural production.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">According to him, \u201cthe overall investment, under the initiative, amounts to between $16 billion to $25 billion over a period of four years with a strong government support and private sector leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Release \u00a0 \u25aaAbout $16B to $25B investment envisaged says AfDB By Laolu Akande, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Media &amp; Publicity Office of the Vice President&nbsp; &nbsp; In line with its commitment to develop a thriving agro-industrial sector, the Federal Government will welcome partnerships and initiatives that would make Nigeria actualize its potential [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":19886,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-19885","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19885","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19885"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19885\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/everyday.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}