Post by Trade Coach on May 6, 2017 20:46:00 GMT 1
37,000 YOUNG GRADUATE TO BENEFIT FROM 280M DOLLARS AFDB AGRICBUSINESS FUND
Dr. Akinwumi, President of the African Development Bank (AFDB), has said 37,000 young graduates in Nigeria who would be given 50,000 dollars each from the 280,000 million dollars approved by the bank to encourage the Nigerian youth to venture into agricbusiness.
Adesina who was represented by Dr. Chiji Ojukwu, a Director at AFDB, disclosed this on Tuesday in Ibadan at the African youth Agripreneurs (AYA) Forum, organized by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan.
He said AFDB is working with 33 countries to give assistance to youths in agriculture.
‘’The 280 million dollars that we have approved for Nigeria cannot be enough, ‘’we need 1.8 billion dollars to accommodate 37,000 youths. This is why we are giving 80 per cent of the money to commercial banks so that they can lend from their own balance sheet and we expect that every dollar we put in would generate 5 dollars’’ he said.
Adesina said the programme was for young graduates who could easily be trained on agriculture.
Mr. Ken Lonhento, programme coordinator, Technical Centre for Agriculture (CTA), highlighted various job opportunities in ‘agripreneur’ which may not involve working on the farms.
Lonhento said that most youths were not aware of these opportunities, resulting in many of them shunning the agriculture sector.
