Tinubu: Bad governance, limited access to funding threatening food security in Africa

President Bola Tinubu, says food security is affected by bad governance which has led to conflicts and political instability in some of the African countries.

Tinubu spoke at a high-level event held on the sidelines of the 78th United Nations General Assembly on Thursday.

The event was themed, ‘Attracting Investments in Land Restoration, Food Systems, and Rural Transformation in Africa’. 

The conference was aimed at exploring innovative solutions, investment opportunities, and partnerships to enhance productivity, resilience, and sustainability in African agriculture, focusing on smallholder farmers. 

Speaking at the event, Tinubu said another factor affecting food security is limited access to financing as only 300 out of the 774 local government areas in Nigeria have bank branches.

The president, represented by Abdulaziz Yar’Adua, senator representing Katsina central district, said there is an utmost need for smallholder farmers in Nigeria and Africa to access financing to ensure food security.

“Some small farm holders travel sometimes up to 200 kilometres to be able to access finance, infrastructure gaps with some rural farmers not having good access roads to be able to evacuate their produce to the markets and absence of technology in most of the rural communities which they can leverage to their advantage to sell their produce,” the politician said.

“Others are inconsistencies in policies that affect land tenure, land reformation, and agriculture itself, cumbersome regulatory processes, which can also frustrate international finance institutions’ assistance in agricultural production in most of the African countries.

“This event is quite important for Nigeria as it affects rural farmers in our communities. So it is important to attract financing, and investment and also ensure that certain processes are put in place so that our rural farmers can have a very good harvest.

“We’re doing everything possible in Nigeria to ensure that all the things that are needed within the agriculture value chain are provided to the farmers.

“This event and this session that I attended, which involves attracting international financing, is to ensure that our rural farmers are given access to finance.”

Tinubu, therefore called on investors to recognise not only Nigeria but also African countries to see how they can bring their financing to help in assisting rural farmers gain access to financing.