China pledges 6.7billion dollars to Nigerian agriculture

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo (R) With The Chinese Ambassador To Nigeria, Mr Gu Xiaojie

The People’s Republic of China through its office has restated its promise to help develop the Nigerian Agriculture. The commitment was made   during the recently held China-Nigeria Agricultural Modernization Cooperation Forum 2017, held in Abuja.

The Chinese Economic and Commercial Counselor, Chinese Embassy, Abuja, Mr. Zhao Linxiang, disclosed that his country promised $6.7 billion to develop Nigeria’s agriculture through training of hundreds of Nigerians to achieve food sufficiency.

 He added that China is ready to share its experience in agricultural development with Nigeria in order to transform the sector to enhance productivity, stating that as the most populated country in the world and also the biggest developing country has produced food for 20 per cent of the world’s population.

 Zhao who stressed  that China and Nigeria are both major agricultural nations, having a strong complementary in the field of agriculture development, said: ‘In the past 15 years, Chinese government has provided agricultural training courses for hundreds of Nigerian candidates which has promoted the level of Nigeria’s agricultural development.”

‘‘In 2016, we held the China-Nigeria Agricultural Technical Training Programme; 40 Nigerian officials and technicians got trained in Abuja on different agricultural innovations with good results; we have also started training for 2017”, adding that “China is going to train 40 participants from all the 36 states, including FCT, on pest control, mechanization, and application of farm inputs and so on,” he said.

He further assured that the Chinese government would encourage Chinese companies to invest in Nigeria as he however, expressed hope that the Nigerian government would provide them with better business environment and industrial policies.

China’s Ambassador to Nigeria, Mr. Zhou Pingjian said that China has been implementing ten cooperation agricultural mechanization plans with Africa since Johannesburg summit in 2015, saying China would willingly transfer technologies and management expertise in agriculture to Africa without any reservations.

Mr.Pingjian however expressed the optimism that the cooperation on agriculture modernization between China and Nigeria would continue to serve as a cooperation pacesetter.

He said China, as a strategic partner of the West African country, stands ready to share its experience in agricultural development and provide financial and technical support toward the country's realization of its agricultural and food security plans. He also added that his country is willing to work with Nigeria to provide a more effective platform to mobilize more Chinese investment in Nigeria's Green Alternative," Zhou said.

The envoy noted agricultural modernization has been one of the ten cooperation plans China has been implementing with Africa since the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) summit held in 2015 in Johannesburg.

Speaking at the forum, the representative of the minister of agriculture and rural development, the coordinating director of the RUFIN Mr. Abdulazeez, said the country has so far benefited from its strong affinity with China noting that China's agricultural growth is impressive and offers a lesson for African countries:China pulled over 400 million people out of poverty within 10 years. It did largely through the transformation of its agricultural sector. China does not pay lip service to agriculture.

He added that, through the newly launched Economic Recovery Growth Plan, agriculture would be a stable driver of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) with an average growth rate of 6.9 percent. He continued to say that Agriculture currently accounts for 23 percent of Nigeria's GDP and employs 38 percent of its working population, as the country is projected to become a net exporter of key agricultural products such as rice, cashew nuts, groundnuts, cassava and vegetable oil by 2020, according to the government.

He further stressed that between 2002 and 2014, China and Nigeria implemented two phases of the program under the China-Nigeria South-South Agricultural Cooperation, which provided the technical training in agronomy, water conservancy, fisheries, and animal husbandry and so on in Nigeria. China has provided a lot of training opportunities to Nigerian agricultural officials and technical staff for their capacity building, which has achieved good results.

He also said that the, Chinese agricultural enterprises have been operating in Nigeria and had provided high-quality seeds for Nigerian farmers.

The Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, who was represented by Mr Yakubu Buba, Chairman, Nigeria-China Relationship Commission, said mechanized agriculture was the way to go in order to achieve food sufficiency for the country and in that case Nigeria work effectively to learn what is needed in the course of the China-Nigeria partnership.

The Forum which focused on the ways on how China could assist Nigeria to achieve an increase in agricultural productivity, food security and poverty reduction toward overall sustainable diversification of its economy  was organized by the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission (NIPC), the China Chamber of Commerce in Nigeria and a Chinese firm, Green Agriculture West Africa Limited (GAWAL), was attended by representatives of the Chinese embassy and firms, senior Nigerian officials and stakeholders from various agricultural departments, national lawmakers and scholars and researchers.