In its
effort to ensure African countries’ agricultural policies to be friendly to
private business investment, the Growing Africa’s Agriculture (AGRA) has
initiated Micro Reforms (Policy, Regulation and Law) for African Agri-businesses
(MIRA) towards achieving this objective in about five nationals including
Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Burkina, Faso and Ghana.
Head of Policy Advocacy AGRA Mr. Boaz Black
Keizire said MIRA is one of the key
flagship program of Agra which its overall vision is to achieve the year 2020 access to market and finance through
spending more time on building partnership with the public and private sector.
MIRA was
to find solution that will help African countries to increase private
investments in small and medium sized agribusinesses operating in smallholder
agricultural value chains.
In its
meeting held in Abuja, Nigeria last month, the agricultural stakeholders from
both the public and private brainstorm on the ways to better enhanced the
present agricultural policy towards attracting more private sector investment
of private business in Nigeria.
The
meeting which syndicates into groups that looked to areas of challenges that
need to be enhanced which includes fertilizer/agrochemicals, seed, supply chain
and logistic, food processing/value addition, and Agricultural Finance was able
to exhaustively come up with proffered solutions.
However the representative of the Permanent
Secretary, Engineer Jato said that the lunch of “Mira will create more jobs for
out youths and make farmers richer and this will entails government working more on suitable policies
that will be environmental friendly for private sector investment”
Dr Tony Bello, a
special adviser to former Minister of Agriculture, Dr. Adesina hailed the
involvement of MIRA being initiated by AGRA saying it is a five years
initiative meant to provide African government with access to high quality
local and international technical assistance for identifying, prioritizing and
reforming scientific agricultural regulations that always deter private investment in small and medium scale
business.
He attributed
policies summersault and
unregulated environment as challenges being faced by the Agribusiness in
Nigeria saying that “ the security of raw material, lack of government
coordination and inconsistency of regulation, tax policy, infrastructure, human
capital, land and finance are serious hindrances to the sector” While Dr. Tony pointed that enabling reform on innovative financing for
agriculture, full scale implementation of seed and fertilizer policy regulation
and law, dry season farming and irrigation farming at scale will change the
face of agricultural practice in Nigeria.
Nigeria
has been selected as one of the countries for MIRA project support. The MIRA is
a demand driven which required that Nigeria must come up with its challenges
that stakeholders identified as hindrance to private sector investment in agric
business.
Dr Tony Bello said
Agra is implementing the Mira project, which is a five years initiative to
provide African government with access to high quality local and international
technical assistance for identifying, prioritizing and reforming scientific
agricultural regulations and currently deter or limit private investment in
small and medium scale business.
He further said policies and regulatory environment constrain
are the problems faced by the Agribusiness in Nigeria such as, the security of
raw material, lack of government coordination and inconsistency of regulation,
Tax policy, infrastructure, human capital, land and finance. Ha added that
enabling reform on innovative financing for agriculture, full scale
implementation of seed and fertilizer policy regulation and law, dry season
farming and irrigation farming at scale.
Alhaji Tafida a
stakeholder present at the meeting noted that Mira is a gap filling procedure
and a way to improve African agriculture, which will also help tap round
livestock, stressing that 75% of annual produce is a byproduct will help in
feeding the livestock, instead of allowing them graze across the country which
is current giving security issues in the country.
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