His Excellency President Dr. Julius Maada Bio will tomorrow 26th January, 2023, at 11:15am, address the Dakar 2 Summit held in Senegal, alongside other states leaders on ‘the priorities for food and agriculture transformation’.
He is scheduled to join other Heads of States to share their priorities for growth in agriculture, regional integration, public-private partnerships and scaling up success stories.
The three-day Summit commencing today and ending on 27th January, 2023 at the Abdou Diouf International Conference Center in Diamniado, outside Dakar, will be hosted by the Senegalese President Macky Sal who is also the African Union President and co- hosted by the African Development Bank Group.
The Dakar 2 Summit seeks to bring together governments, private sector leaders, representatives from multilateral organisations and NGOs, as well as scientists and researchers to explore ways to meet the escalating challenge of food security in Africa and strengthen the continent’s resilience to future shocks.
Sierra Leone, Rwanda, Egypt, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Mozambique will be in one category for country concurrent Country Compacts discussions. While the Ministers of Agriculture and Finance, Central Bank Governors in Africa, private sector and researchers will participate in a high-level roundtable on scaling technologies for African Agricultural Transformation Introducing new technological systems and practices, combined with traditional knowledge and techniques.
Sierra Leone’s priorities at the Dakar 2 Summit will include food self-sufficiency through sustainable and diversified production of food including crops and animals and industrialising the agriculture sector.
The African Development Bank is financing two on-going projects in the agriculture sector which includes the Sierra Leone Agribusiness and Rice Value Chain Support Project (SLARiS)-USD11 million and the Rice Agro Industrial Cluster Project (RAIC)-USD 42 million.
President Macky Sall said: “The most pressing issues preventing Africa’s food and agriculture: coordination towards targets, private sector investment, climate adaptation and mitigation, technologies to promote productivity, access to finance, trade and infrastructure to promote private sector investment, policies promoting food and agriculture delivery”.
International development partners have a crucial role to play in supporting agriculture in Africa, particularly in light of significant external pressures. With almost a quarter of Africa’s GDP coming from agriculture, that figure could rise considerably if funding was allocated to increase food productivity.
Increasing agriculture productivity entails soil fertility management. The uptake of fertilizer on the African Continent has been much lower than in other regions of the world. Fertilizer subsidy schemes have not had the intended impact to promote access to fertilizer by smallholder farmers. There is much potential to grow supply and distribution.
