Hon Richard Tusabe, the Minister of State in Charge of the National Treasury for Rwanda has said there is a need to finance the agriculture sector on the African continent to ensure food and nutrition security.
He was speaking during a side event for parliamentarians that was moderated by Dr. Fatimata Lovetta Sesay, the UNDP Resident Representative for Rwanda, at the 2024 Africa Food Systems Forum held in Kigali, Rwanda from 2 to 6 September 2024.
The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) or the Maputo Declaration called for a 10 percent budget allocation to agriculture by 2008. The 2014 Malabo Declaration also adopted this target in pursuit of promoting agricultural growth on the African continent.
Hon Tusabe said agricultural financing, even for commercial farmers, is very small mainly because of the vulnerabilities in the sector.
“Then if you get a chance to be financed, you must not finance it short term in nature. So agricultural investments take a lot of time to be able to build back profits. Financiers consider the issues of cost, timing, and even the issue of understanding agriculture production and productivity. The risks that are involved are quite high so that denies agriculture persons a chance to up the resources, despite the good project.
“So what have we tried to do to ensure that we mitigate and minimize that problem? One is to say, can we introduce insurance cover projects that will insure the farmers? Where do we have a chance? Is it mainly getting loans through big commercial funds? Do we have people globally who can fund farmers? Yes, we have seen the private sector players coming and investing in our respective countries to give us the productivity that we need,” he said.
The finance guru said official development assistance (ODA) helped with financing the continent in the agriculture sector front. The assistance has been coming from institutions like the World Bank that sign financing agreements for agriculture projects.
Addressing the same gathering, Jeremy Lissouba, Secretary General of the African Food Systems Parliamentary Network, who is also a Member of Parliament from Congo Brazzaville, said there is a need for legislation beyond the 10 percent agriculture budget allocation outlined in CAADP if the continent is to sufficiently feed itself and ensure food and nutrition security.
