Nigeria aims to create 3m new jobs

London - Nigeria’s Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development Dr Akinwumi Adesina says his country's inclusion in the G8 food security and nutrition coalition will help his country to create 3.5m new jobs and provide over $2bn additional income for Nigerian farmers.

Nigeria was named a partner country in the new alliance for food security and nutrition, which is a G8 initiative to boost private-sector investment in African agriculture.

Adesina said: "We have bold targets for Nigeria’s agriculture transformation and the world is noticing.

"With Nigeria’s inclusion into the food alliance, our agribusinesses and major multinationals will leverage our domestic resources to deliver on our country’s agricultural promise.

"We are already seeing results from bold policy reforms, donor country support and private sector commitments.

"This is our moment.

"This initiative will help Nigerian farmers and agribusiness to sustain this momentum.”

The minister said Nigeria would be a strong advocate for substantive initiatives to improve agricultural production and incomes, focusing attention on empowering women farmers.

The country’s new partnership would continue to drive the need to reduce the food import bill; promote domestic and regional markets and create jobs across the entire value chain, ultimately keeping the country on track to meet its agriculture target of increasing food production by 20 million metric tons of food for 2015.

To date, 28 companies have signed letters of intent to invest a total of more than $3.3bn in the country’s agriculture sector.