 Welcome to the CNBC Africa Debate coming to you live from the World Economic Forum on Africa currently in session in Cape Town. Our focus for the next hour is agriculture, investing in transformation. And in this session we focus on how partnerships across the African continent are accelerating investment in this vital sector of the economy. Joining me from my immediate right, I have a Ken Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development in Nigeria. Philip Carriro, the President and Chairman of the Eastern African Farmers Federation, Kenya. Jane Carrucu, who is President of the Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa, or Agra. Michael Mack, the CEO, Sunjenta International, and James Mwangi, the Group CEO of Equity Bank, Kenya. We'll be accepting audience questions throughout today's discussion via Twitter. Our hashtag is hashtag with agriculture. Now the World Bank expects Africa's farmers and agribusinesses to become a trillion dollar food market by 2030 by expanding access to more capital, electricity, better technology, and irrigated land. But this will require governments to work side by side with agribusinesses to link farmers with consumers in an increasingly urbanised Africa. Agriculture, traditionally seen as subsistence, has been recognised as a powerful driver of the continent's growth. And despite covering a surface area of roughly 30 million square kilometres with 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land, Africa is still footing a food input bowl of $50 billion annually. We moved from a self-sufficient production system to a net-imported situation. To the extent that now we were importing and spending $11 billion importing basic things like wheat, rice, sugar, and fish. It doesn't make any sense given our potential. Agriculture accounts for more than one-third of sub-Saharan Africa's economic output and the food market is valued at $310 billion and has the potential to grow to $1 trillion by 2030, according to the World Bank. A major turnaround also is in looking at it just as a social sector and really more as an economic sector and looking at farmers not just as people who need to be helped but as agribusinesses and potential economic powerhouses in their own right. There have been a contribution of factors that has led to Africa's lackluster food production. These include issues around property rights, land grabbing and a lack of investment in modern technology. It's all good to provide people with land but they also have to have the capacity to cultivate and manage the land that they have and that's why they need training and infrastructure for transport, water, machinery, etc. They need to know how to handle seeds, they need to know how to transport their yields and they also need to know how to store their yields. So this all comes back to education. By 2030, Africa will have one of the youngest populations in the world and according to a study by the Population Reference Bureau, this demographic will be the driving force behind the continent's economic prosperity. The key challenge going forward though will be how we can get young people interested in agriculture simply because they are the majority and this is where I think much more needs to be done. 2030 is the target for Africa to become a net food exporter and agriculture to become a trillion dollar industry and for this vision to be realized it will require a unified effort to create the conditions in which African farmers can flourish. Well Minister Adesino, we may be in search of a one trillion dollar business in Africa when it comes to agriculture but you have been quoted as saying that you want agriculture to be bigger than oil in Nigeria. That's quite a big statement for an oil based economy. Is it a reality? Well actually take a look at it. Nobody drinks oil and nobody smokes gas. Agriculture is going to be the lifeline for Africa and why not? Take a look at Nigeria for example. We have 84 million hectares of land of which no more than 60% of it is cultivated and in fact in terms of optimal cultivation no more than 10% of it is in high quality seed, fertilizers, mechanization and good irrigation. In terms of transforming agriculture in Africa for me is that we have to make a fundamental paradigm shift. Agriculture is not a social sector. Agriculture is not a development activity. Agriculture is a business. Whether you seed or fertilize or process in value adding, transport logistics, everything about agriculture is a business. That for me is fundamental. Secondly we must understand that the role of government in agriculture is not to produce anything. The role of government is to provide a neighboring environment, right policies, institutions to support private sector, good regulations and infrastructure support for the private sector to drive the system. Agriculture in Africa must shift into that kind of a thing. For me in Nigeria we have focused on making our agriculture more productive, efficient, competitive. We want to be a global player with the kind of water we have, cheap labor we have to intensify agriculture. It makes absolutely no sense to be that we are a large importer of food and we want to industrialize agriculture and make it to be a major revenue and after us. And so some of the things that I think are very fundamental, there must be some major reforms. Major reforms to get a private sector in, in seed, in fertilizers, in tractors, in irrigation, privatizing a lot of things. Those are very, very important. When I became minister in Nigeria, I inherited a system of fertilizers supplied that was probably the most corrupt system that you found in Nigeria. Government bought and sold fertilizers and the fertilizer was half sand and half fertilizer. And so what we did was it took us 90 days. Minister, I'm going to interrupt you there. I'm going to come to the enabling environment that you've created in Nigeria because I want to focus on it in more detail, a little further down in the discussion. I want to bring Philip in now in terms of a voice for East African farmers. Philip, the minister has said that agriculture should be seen as a business. Is that how the East African community is seeing agriculture right now? Yeah, in fact, I'm allowed to report that the East African community actually sees agriculture as a business. It also sees agriculture as a means to regional integration because if we can actually be food secure as a region, we should actually be able to actually integrate our people and businesses. So I'm glad within the region that is the understanding and also within the farm organizations because all our activities as professional farm organizations are geared towards economic services to agriculture so that small square farmers can actually get to transforming their businesses and getting to agriculture as a business. Jane Agra committed to doubling the income of 20 million farmers by 2020. Ambitious goal. Are you on track? Yes, yes. It is very ambitious and it is doable and we are on our way there. And I think we do this and just I'll take a bit of time to explain how we do it. We are doing it by intervening across the entire value chain right from the seed to the table because we know the challenging, our target is to work with small-holder farmers and they have a lot of structural challenges to be competitive so that they can see themselves as a business like Philip is describing them to be. So we do attack capacity building right from technology basis. So we've taken about 800 scientists across Africa in the 16 countries that we work in who come back to Africa and work in research so that they can develop through biotechnology good varieties that can withstand the changing climates, that can improve productivity and can deliver to the farmer household both for eating or consumption and for selling their excess so they can do the other things that they need to do in life. Michael Minister Adesino moment ago talking about creating that enabling environment we are going to drill down into how he's doing that specifically in Nigeria but as the private sector representative what are you looking for? Well look, Africa today is a very large agricultural economy in and of its own right. Today there's more land under cultivation in Africa than all of China and all of India and often we think about powerhouse agricultural economies like Russia and Brazil and there is more land under cultivation in all of Africa than Russia and Brazil combined. So when you think about the productivity though of the African continent it's not very high. So for us we see this as a growth imperative. This is really going to be an agricultural powerhouse. It's just a question of when. And James of course finance is key to this equation. Many people must be knocking on your door. How are you meeting the needs of farmers out there? Thank you very much. Financing of agriculture is becoming more interesting. Governments invest substantially in creating the infrastructure to support this sector. We are seeing a change of mind where development institutions are seeing now agriculture as a business as opposed to a philanthropic development or social sector. And again we are seeing enormous infusion of capacity building particularly through partnerships. People like Agra, governments like Nigeria and a lot of resources are being devoted. Today's the capacity of the farmers and consequently they become bankable and their businesses become bankable. So it becomes pretty easy and we are seeing huge flows in that sector. Mr. Adesina coming back to this enabling environment and certainly weeding out corruption. You were mentioning seed and fertilizer where you have managed to make this possible. How have you done that? I think that's what happens is that in Nigeria as with most African countries government was buying and selling fertilizers and seed. And as you do that the government essentially crowds out the private sector. And so the supply chains of the seed companies and the fertilizer companies essentially gets truncated and goes only to the government warehouse. And when that happens in the case of Nigeria we were finding that fertilizers as I was saying earlier was half sand and half fertilizer. People will buy seed of the grain of the main market and sell it as seed. And so basically the farmers were being thought changed. We were not really subsidizing farmers. You know for those four decades we were subsidizing corruption. And so when I became minister the president was very clear that we had to clean up the system. And it took us essentially 90 days to clean it up. We took the government out of buying and selling. We privatized it. We put it all back in the hands of private sector. And today in one year after doing it the private sector seed companies in Nigeria sold 100 million dollars worth of fertilizers directly to farmers as opposed to government. The seed companies sold 10 million dollars worth of seed to farmers instead of to government. And that's a huge thing for us. And the other thing that we did was we developed this system called electronic wallet. You know in Nigeria today we have 150 million plus cell phones. We have more cell phones than you have of televisions in Nigeria. And so we took the power of that cell phone and we registered our farmers. Today we have registered 10 million farmers all with full biometric information. And we send electronic coupons for seed and fertilizers to them by mobile phones. In our first year we reached 1.5 million of them. And that impacted 7.5 million people. This year we are going to reach 10 million of them by phone. So we've taken a sector that was a market sector, corrupt sector. And we've opened it up. Today I can tell you as a minister which farmer gets what, when did they get it, where did they get it, how much did they pay, how much did we pay. And so that is the role of government. And I say my job is farmers minister. I don't need anybody between me and farmers. And technology of cutting out the rent seekers is the fastest way to do it. The minister refers to electronic wallet. iCow apparently is prevalent in Kenya. And it can tell you when a cow is on heat. What you need to feed the cow in order to produce more milk. So certainly we've got technology transforming the agricultural landscape. Are you seeing your farmers embracing technology? Yeah, in fact we are actually seeing our farmers embracing technology with capacity. Because even within our own organizations we have actually ensured that we actually strengthen our knowledge management and communication systems. So that we can actually be able to actually connect farmers with existing innovations in communications and be able to do business. Because if they are actually properly connected and informed and they actually know exactly what to do with the technology that is actually available through innovative platforms, they should actually be able to get into business. But I have a feeling that all that we are actually doing is trying to ensure that the environment is right. But we have a feeling that there are things, there are basics that needs to be right before farmers can actually be confident and be able to take advantage of the existing innovations and technologies. And one that is required for small scale farmers is organization. Because if you look at the innovations and the service providers, they will not be able to service small scale farmers properly unless they are organized. The bonds, the extension, research, they will not be able to do a good job unless the farmers are actually properly organized. Because if you take the character of Africa, 70% of it is small scale. And we need to actually find innovative ways of actually servicing that category of farming that is actually dominant in our own countries. So organization for us is actually key. And with organization, as you said, those different innovations that actually exist out there. And for Kenya, I think we are blessed in that we have those next door. The farmers should actually be able to take advantage of them. Jane, you also are passionate about organized farmers and cooperation in terms of meeting investors' needs on a larger scale. Can you elaborate on that? Yes, I think we have very many examples where we are seeing successful groups of farmers come together and they link up to even supplying larger multinationals. We have examples in South Sudan where cassava and Mozambican Ghana, where cassava growers are coming together, and they've actually become a key supplier of cassava as a source of starch to make beer for Southern Africa breweries. And I understand that it tastes better, much better than the Bali one. A lot of people may not agree. And then this, because a small farmer inherently is small and they have no voice and they are not competitive. So farmer groups are a very good platform for them to come together so they can build their scale and they can have negotiating power either for buying their own inputs or for selling their own produce. And I think the challenge is then how do you build their capacity so they start thinking and they run themselves like a business. And we have good examples in Kenya, in Malawi, in West Africa for Sojigi, David's and Tanzania as well. And I think it's a way of life. But the challenge and where we find a gap, and these were probably governments can play a role, is that how do you create an enabling environment for either capacity building or for the laws and the platforms where these farmers come together and in a way that we don't see them as competing with the political powers that are because that has been a challenge in the past. Michael, I just want to stay on technology for a moment and how you balance technological innovation with employment because traditionally farming has been used as an empowerment tool. Well, look, the first of all, technology is perfectly compatible with smallholder farmers. So many people think about it as when you bring technology in, labor can move off the land. It's been noted many times that hand-weeding isn't exactly a very agreeable job on a farm. Farmers that are technologically enabled are able to put their kids in school and with more prosperity, of course, a success does breed success. I agree with Philip that African farmers are themselves very willing and able to use the most modern technology that's available. What we need to have more of are markets for them to sell their production to. And as Jane said, the best way to make those markets and thereby be able to farm with confidence is to be able to link things up end to end. Technology enablement actually is a really easy part of the puzzle if we can be sure that that technology can find its way all the way to the consumer. That's happening. James, coming back to the financial side of things, I was in a session this morning with eight ministers of agriculture that formed Grow Africa some two years ago, I think at this very forum. And those ministers, one of them suggested that there's a need for an agricultural bank. Is that the reality? Do we need a specialized bank to deal with farmers only? There are merits and demerits, pros and cons of thinking that way. One, when people talk about the specialization, the problem is the size of the market, whether you want to create sector banks and how you insulate them from the shocks when the shocks come. It is diversification that provides financial systems with the resilience that is built. However, there is a case for really focused product development tailored towards agriculture. There is also a case for looking at delivery mechanism towards agriculture. But you can say that will be a preserve of an agricultural bank. So to me, I would likely let to take agriculture like any other sector. Otherwise, then we shall build a case for manufacturing banks, brewing banks, you know, sort of mindset. So why don't we make agriculture a competitive industry that competes with the other sectors? And that is when you have a win-win situation, both to the radar and to the follower. But narrowing it and saying, let's have a bank that specializes, the inclination will be that these banks will offer low interest rates. Then that ceases to be scalable and sustainable. So I would really, really advocate for the thinking to really improve the sector itself. Not think about enclaves that serves it, but think of improving the sector to be competitive and become a market player as a business. James, as a farmer's daughter, I feel well qualified to ask you this question. Is it not riskier to lend to a farmer because of events, shocks that you refer to, floods, droughts, disease? I can name a couple more. Jenny, thank you very much. We seem to share a lot, also a son of a peasant family. But I think the issue is not the credit risk in agriculture. What we really need to address are the other risks that make agricultural lending difficult. What little banks fear is not analyzing and pricing credit risk. It's a question of the weather risk, the market risk, disease risk, the value chain risk, the ecosystem risk. That is what banks are not tailored to make. But banks would really address the credit risk. But banks have a challenge of dealing with productivity, yield in the sector, weather hazards, profitability on land-fed agriculture. Those are the risks that a bank is not able to do. And that is why banks shy from, but they don't shy from the credit risk. Minister, I can see you want to add. Yes, absolutely. The thing is about all these development banks, I don't buy that for agriculture. If you look at Africa today, you have excess liquidity on the balance sheet of Africa's banks. We have big banks and they have deep pockets. The fact is less than 2% of all of that is actually going into agriculture, which accounts for over 40% of the GDP and 70% of employment. The question to ask is why. First and foremost is that a lot of bankers have very high passive risk of lending to agriculture, which is actually much excessively higher than the real risk of lending to agriculture. Secondly, is that banks themselves have not built that capacity to actually assess the risk of lending to agriculture. Today in Africa, the thing we need to do is to put in place risk-sharing instruments that allows the risk that the banks face when they lend to agriculture to be much reduced. And in fact, we've done that. I mean, we started this when I was a Rockefeller Foundation, later when I was in Agra and now in Nigeria. And also working with great bankers like James and Wangi, we put in place risk-sharing instruments that are leveraging today tens of millions of dollars. In fact, in Nigeria, we put in place with the Central Bank of Nigeria a facility of $350 million that is leveraging $3.5 billion of the balance sheet of our banks. And so I think we need to change our mindset. The money is there. It's just making sure that we fix the financial value chain but also make sure, as James rightly said, that we fix also the agricultural value chain so that the whole thing is coordinated. If banks can find a money trail in anything, the banks will lend to it. So that's why I come back to what I said earlier that treating agriculture as a business, making investment cases there for banks, we've seen that in Nigeria. In the last one year, the banks lent $20 million to seed companies in Nigeria, 0% default. And I think in your bank, you're experiencing maybe about 2% default. So that's what we need to scale up. Michael? Just not forget, by the way, that in many parts of the world, some of the risks that you just talked about were on account of Mother Nature and there is an insurance industry out there. We were part of setting up an insurance program that today covers more than 1,000 growers in Kenya and Uganda where we've set up weather stations and they pay an insurance when they buy their seeds and their crop protection chemicals and if the weather isn't agreeable, then they're instantly paid back and they don't have to haggle with the insurance companies. It's an example of credit and insurance at the same time for growers and it's hassle free and it's enabled by technology. And so there's plenty of innovation that can help these growers overcome some of the systematic risks of farming. Jenna, I see this topic as touching a nerve with everybody because James also wants to add, but if you can take the floor. I was going to say that we all need to work together on this agenda and I think James, as a point, we need to do risk the whole chain. So for example, we need to start with a good seed that is going to improve maybe by a factor of 30 to even 100% in terms of your productivity. The knowledge, what do you do with that seed? How do you protect yourself from, even if you're depending on the rain fed, how do you protect yourself against that? How do you take insurance over that? And those insurance products are not really available in all parts of the world. And then how do you market? You can see somebody tweeting that brokers are evil. Brokers are actually not evil because they actually link between the farmers and the markets, if you think, let's say, of consumable products or fast-moving, let's say like vegetables or fruits. And then the other part is that how do you make these markets sustainable? So to the farmer who was farming and wanted to take it as a business, there is true value return to them. And if I could quickly share, there's a fantastic example out of Kenya where every partner has come together and it's about bananas. There's tissue culture and Rockefeller wishes enough to fund that work. So the tissue culture gives you an uplift maybe about 15% to 30% productivity. The value, somebody went and agrar and taught these farmers instead of selling by eyeball way, and then you improve your productivity from a value perspective 13 times from one bob to 13 shillings a kilo. The market is organized, so you have one broker. The market is ready. The habits of eating bananas grow. And James's bank was able to come and lend these guys because they were de-risked in a way. So you find the whole chain. It keeps improving. Now this group of farmers are now trying to build more professional ripening systems so they can export ready-made bananas or even value-added in terms of chips and juices and stuff like that. So they risk the whole process but work as partners from government, private sector, financial institutions, technology providers, et cetera. But we have to work together. So it's really about engaging this multi-stakeholder environment. We're going to discuss that further after the break. You're watching CNBC Africa coming to you live from the World Economic Forum on Africa in Cape Town. Stay with us. We'll be back after the short break. Grace, you can all breathe for two minutes. Thanks for holding your breath for such a long time. We do all the guests again. Bill, all the guests again. Yeah, yeah. I'm just going to introduce you all again to camera. Welcome back to the World Economic Forum on Africa. We're still focusing on agriculture, investing in transformation. And I have a Ken Adesina, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nigeria. Philip Carriro, the President and Chairman of the Eastern African Farmers Federation, Kenya. Jane Karuku, President Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa. That's Agra. Michael Mack, the CEO of Syngenta International and James Mwangi, Group CEO of Equity Bank, Kenya. James, I just want to stay with this financial discussion for a little longer. Are bankers becoming innovative when it comes to insurance projects or insurance products rather for farmers? It is true. Banks are becoming innovative in managing this, but basically what the banks are doing are to pool partners who can provide financial services. Banks are not really delighting the insurance policies, but they are saying, can we pool, create an ecosystem? Can we create a complete value chain where we desegregate the risk and get the specialist to delight that risk? So I see that for instance, livestock insurance is now in the market, crop insurance, weather insurance, and these are now becoming helpful tools that banks are using to cover the weather risks. Michael, you are present in 90 countries. You employed 27,000 people across the globe. One of your key focuses is crop protection. Can I put the bad word in there, pesticides? How is Africa receiving the crop protection gain? Well today, Africa, I mentioned a bit of gold that the productivity here in Africa is not very high. In part, they don't have, because they don't have great access to markets, they're not using the most modern tools available to them. And let's face it, if you have a basic fertilizer, if you've got the money to be able to use a good seed in the ground, then it is critical for you to protect that investment because those are the front-end investments. And Mother Nature wants to have a goal at the farm as you know whether it's an insect or weeds or disease from fungus. If these things aren't protected, the farmer is going to lose 100% of their crop, so it's a necessary and important tool to agriculture. But you've battled with pesticides traditionally. There was a revolution against using pesticides generally. Can you take me through how that perception is perhaps changing? Because you're right, you need to protect against the unforeseen. And in this instance, often disease. Yeah, sure. The very first incidents of pesticides have already been discovered 5,000 B.C. So farmers have been battling pests who've been competing with their crops for a very long time. I appreciate that in less enlightened parts of the world, as people move away from the farm and move into the cities, they want to make romantic the idea that farming is easy and that it's something that they can do without tools. People who live in farming communities and in rural communities understand very well that these are essential tools and each and every year the new products that come out are better than the ones that preceded them. Jen, how are you working with the G8 and their initiative for agriculture, specifically open data, which I know has recently been tabled. It's actually where I picked up the iCOW information out of Kenya. Okay. I think we are working with them to develop data because one of the things that lacks in Africa, unlike in other continents, is data. Data to support the farmers, even in terms of how much rain are we going to expect? What's the price of commodities? What's a better pesticide to use so that I don't destroy my environment? What's a better seed in terms of ecological zones? And we are struggling with this data even in terms of what are the practices that will lead us to have a great impact in terms of solving our problems. So we are working with G8 in terms of trying to build whole data because nobody has it right now and we are working to create it. Are the East African Farmers Federation starting to access that data as well from the G8? I would like to say that to a limited extent. I think we need to do more around it than it is right now because when it actually comes to protection of crops out there, I think there is more to it in small-scale agriculture than just protecting the crop because we actually happen to be the immediate consumers of what we grow. And it's actually very important that around use and application of pesticides, the small-scale farmers are actually properly trained and informed so that we actually have a culture that protects not only us as consumers but those who actually come to the markets in the rural areas. The other issue I would like to capture just quickly is the issue of financing agriculture because I think for us it is actually farmers that have actually been pushing for agricultural banks. There are even commodities that have actually gone to an extent of saying hey, let's have a coffee farmer's bank but I think that was actually out of problem that a lot of us actually had because there were times when commercial banks had not gone rural. I would like to thank Equity and other banks from Kenya that have actually gone to the rural areas. So we did not actually have a CV to present to the banks to be able to access facilities. Two, with the growth in trade and getting small producers actually producing along specific value chains like small daily, we are actually able to have a common bond where we actually paid through banks and that provides the bank with information on individual farmers. And then the issue of insurance, the same farmer fedrushon was actually involved in a program with the commissar, the Common Market for Eastern South Africa in trying to actually market you know, weather index insurance. And I think this is exactly how we need governments because what is actually lacking out there is actually credible weather stations that can be relied on and I think it is only the public sector, it is only governments that can actually be able to do that. And then beyond that when it comes to issues of lending and getting the banks actually working with us I have personally been involved in a dialogue of a group of stakeholders that is working around getting the banks getting finances work for agriculture where we have the central bank governors we have the commercial banks and the issue of risks keep coming and we need governments in this and I'm glad the governors of central bank are actually picking it because we need to actually address issues of risks. Minister Addisina, I want to come back to grow Africa and informal alliance formed two years ago at the World Economic Forum in Cape Town. You are the latest member of Grow Africa and as I said I was listening to the session earlier today. Do you think that this organization is gaining momentum it's going to have traction in forcing the agricultural agenda? No absolutely, you know as I said in the beginning for far too long we've looked at agriculture as a development activity and now we're looking at agriculture as a business and what Grow Africa actually does is to facilitate linkages between agribusinesses and countries. Take the case of Nigeria and my country for example one of the fundamental things we did was that we said we were going to take investment focus we're going to be very much focused on value change in which we have comparative advantage and that we're going to work with the private sector. In the last one year that we've actually launched our agricultural transformation agenda we have attracted eight billion dollars investment commitments for the private sector and some of them are here, the flower mills of Nigeria here, Dan Gote, Cargill, Unilever and others that are investing in Nigeria and that's because of the fundamental policy shift that we made. And I think this is very important even coming back to the issue of the insurance thing. You know if farmers don't have market if there are no agribusinesses that will buy from the process what they have why will they invest in insurance why will they take credit and so I think it's important to link smallholder farmers to off-takers, the agribusinesses that can actually buy and process what they do. Philip raised the issue about the role of public policy when it comes to insurance products. We know whether index insurance works. The fundamental issue with it though is is it affordable to smallholder farmers and I think this is where the public sector has to come in and subsidize the cost of the premiums for these weather index insurance products to be able to go to scale. And secondly and most fundamentally is that we need to also make sure that when we structure these partnerships with the private sector insurance markets that we liberalize that market. In Nigeria for example we have Nigerian agricultural insurance company. It's a monopoly trying to do agricultural insurance. We've taken that decision that we are going to liberalize that. We're going to get all that insurance company into the mix let them develop better products the premiums are going to go down and therefore farmers are going to be able to afford it. But I think in everything we do in Africa we must not abandon the farmers. For way too long they ask the questions why farmers are poor in Africa. And I think that's because we just simply you know it's almost like you go to Olympics you have no shoes and you're trying to run with who's in boats. I mean you've got to support farmers with institutions, with finance, with credit with things to mitigate their rigs and connect them to markets. And for that it's now and I think Grow Africa provides an excellent platform for doing that. You make an excellent point. You've got to connect farmers with access to finance to credit and you've also got to provide them with access to infrastructure. You can't have a discussion on enabling farmers across rural Africa without understanding the plight and the need for infrastructure. Jane can I get you to comment there? Yes I think in many parts of Africa we see a lot of productivity when it's raining, a lot of produce but the post harvest losses could go up to 30-60% depending on the location. I think the estimate right now is that we are wasting about four billion dollars worth of produce. Simply because the farmers can't get it to markets. Just simply because there is no infrastructure to get from where it is a lot to where there doesn't exist to where the market is. Or they can't store it. They also can't store it because we are very poor at value-addition processes or technologies which is another way which probably can it can be a double-edged solution to attract youth into agriculture because the value-addition will have more money and it's less tedious than the guy in the whole day. Michael can we see here private sector making a dent at providing infrastructure. Specifically private sector players like yourself you are the largest spender on research and development one of the largest spenders on research and development in the agricultural space globally can some of that spend go to infrastructure. We are not in the business of building roads and bridges I'll make that clear. That's not a deep research and development school but what we are able to do because many crops of course are short season crops between the time they plant and the time they harvest so time goes by Sinjenta routinely is responsible for providing the working capital for farmers by giving them credit terms through our distributors and dealers so a big part of a farmers risk profile is that upfront investment in putting the inputs into their crop and the technology providers are the ones largely that finance that. It's a big load off the ground. You bring us back to finance and coming back to infrastructure Minister Edithine I want you to add back to education long-term finance short-term finance working capital do the farmers on the ground have these skills and how are you helping to empower them in terms of financial literacy. Thank you it is true once we complete the value chains and ecosystem I think we need still to invest a lot on the farmer because essentially infrastructure and value chains will not increase productivity on the farmer. It's the farmer themselves that needs to increase the value of the product based on the use of knowledge. Let's say it satisfies the seed fertilizers, right chemicals, right application, farming at the right time and that I think is where huge investments from public resources needs to go. I think we can say that currently the African farmer at the small-scale level is not globally competitive because the knowledge has not been really institutionalized so we need to invest a lot in that area. By the way in traditional agriculture the governments were deeply involved in extension services as James was just saying. I think increasingly with technology I mean think iPad think mobile phone the ability to confer a lot of this knowledge in micro climates throughout the world is going to the cost of that is going to go down substantially and the rate of knowledge acquisition by growers is going to go up exponentially. Philip you want to add? I would like to raise one issue because as Monty has actually put it already the banks are actually working a lot with the farmers. As I said most of our commercial banks are actually now in the rural areas and we've actually formed a bulk of their clients but we still see a missing link when it comes to the way the banks work with the farmers and especially the small scale farmers because a bank is an institution that is professional in nature and has got procedures and our feeling that we still need to connect the bankers with the farm organizations. I would like to see a situation where the East African Farmers Foundation is actually working with Monty and for him to actually develop confidence in our institutions because we are not movements we are professional farm organizations with technical people in our secretariat. For example the East African Farmers Foundation has actually got a trade program officer highly qualified. Philip I'm going to ask you to keep your mic to this. So what we are saying is that for small scale farmers I think we need to connect with the banks so that we can actually be able to ensure that we operate in a manner that small farmers actually operating also through their institutions because as individuals they actually quite vulnerable and we need to actually work on that. What we need to do is then to formalize agribusinesses because essentially what you are doing is that you are confronting an informalized sector with the formal players. Banks come here very formalized and agribusiness has not been really formalized and that's why I said capacity needs to be built so that it's two partners. Organized agriculture is stronger Minister Adesina let's get your input here. I want to talk about infrastructure because you take for example tomatoes in Nigeria. We have a vast valley in Kano which produces over 65% of the tomatoes and it rots away every day because there is no processing capacity there. You take a look at Nigeria in terms of the production of pineapples. We are the number one producer of pineapples in Africa but it rots away we don't have it. So what we decided to do is that it's not the role of the private sector to invest in power, water and roads. The private sector is investing in power, water and roads for them to put their food manufacturing plants there that's an indication of market failure and government failure. What we decided to do in Nigeria is to create these things we call staple crop processing zones. Essentially what they are are like your export processing zones so the food manufacturing industry I mean companies have been attracted to areas of high food production and when they come there we automatically will upgrade power, water and roads for them. So these staple crop processing zones we are providing them with fiscal incentives we are providing them with infrastructure incentives. I take the case of cassava for which Nigeria is the largest producer in the world and I want Nigeria to be the largest processer of it in the world and we are working today with Cargill flower mills of Nigeria and all the Coca-Cola off-takers to process that cassava into starch into sweeteners and even from starch also into sobitol but for those guys to come into those areas we have to provide the infrastructure so I think this is an opportunity for banks, financial institutions multilateral development banks to put money into infrastructure in Nigeria World Bank Africa Development Bank USAID, DFID are supporting investment in infrastructure and I think that's going to be very key for us if we are going to attract the private sector to go in there and process an add value to what we produce. Minister Addesini you remind me of Davos where you said that President Goodluck Jonathan was so good looking because he cassava bread, cassava bread we come back to that. I've got a question here on Twitter and it is what about land ownership? It remains a challenge on the continent. Who would like to field this? I can take that. The issue of land ownership we need to look at it from a gender perspective. I think there is an issue of women not having access to land and I think that we have to sort out. In Harrisons laws are very biased against women in Africa and we have to make sure that you have access to land otherwise as we raise productivity you are going to have a lot of inequality and inequity in the system. Second is for the private sector that comes into a country they want to have access to land. They need to have a one stop shop that can help them in negotiating opportunities. I give an example in Nigeria we attracted a company called Dominion Farms to invest 40 million dollars in rice production in Nigeria. We had to negotiate land for them with the government and they were able to get all the land that they needed. Today we are working with farmers of Nigeria we are in Kogi state of Nigeria we are negotiating access to land for them. I just want to be clear the problem for us in Nigeria is not land. What I will not be for is land grab in a situation where the companies just come to make money off the capitalized value of land but we must make sure that when private companies come into our areas that there is value for the community, that small holder farmers are not disempowered and most importantly that women participate and benefit in a lot of the shared benefits. But how are East African farmers dealing with the situation of land and access to land property rights? Yeah as East African farmers federation we have actually been able to dialogue and discuss the issue of land. We actually have a position on land and we have actually made it very clear that we need to actually sort out the issue of land as a major issue because without security of tenure, especially among the small scale farmers it is not going to be possible. We have actually conducted many studies and it is actually clear that in our own regions it is actually 10% of the small holders that have got legal deeds and you keep wondering exactly why they cannot actually increase productivity, why they cannot actually be able to take care of their soil and the environment. It is because of lack of ownership. So we have actually made it very clear and there is actually data indicating that you get the small scale farmers there is a positive correlation between poverty and land ownership. The reason why in Kenya the small scale agriculture is so dynamic is because some of the regions have legal deeds on land. So for us land is actually critical and we actually need to actually sort it out so that when an investor comes to Kenya, to Uganda, to Tanzania I connect with an investor on business to business basis and I think for us that is actually very important so that we can actually be able to move agriculture forward. At this point I would like to also open to the audience for any questions if you can adhere to the following protocol or the organization you're from and then pose the appropriate question to the select panelist. We have roving mics that we will deploy to the audience. I've got a question here if I could get a mic to this gentleman while we're doing that a quick one to you Jane from Twitter and that is a female farmers minister Adesina mentioned them a moment earlier there's got to be some special support for female farmers out there. I think that's a great question. We say that small hold 80% of the food we eat in Africa is by small hold of farmers of the 80%, another 80% is women. It's only in Africa where women have land issues or ownership issues I think. So the issue of access to finance from a collateral perspective doesn't work. I think last night somebody told us that men eat first, they eat a lot and they take all the money after the hard work. So we need to make sure that we address the specific women issues in terms of being innovative even from a financial sector perspective because we know this is a group of people that do not default. We know they work very hard. But how do we make the situation an environment such that they get what is worth their hard labor and that requires a lot of government interventions in terms of legislation and I guess for people who are in technology transfer in NGO in development in commercial sector like banks to treat women differently. So, question? Yeah. It's fine, you can just hold it. It's on. Hello, my name is Dr. Chris Kirubi from Kenya. First I want to say thank you for all these nice guys here. But I like to classify farming as modern slavery that continues in Africa because people labor for so little if at all anything and to we know access of processed African products to the western world, America and the lot is almost impossible and also even fresh products. So many chemicals from the developed countries in order to comply with their changing rules of the game and the chemical producers make more money than the farmer exporting the products to their countries. Next year we'll be here talking again about the same thing. I like to tell my friend Adesina I admire him but if we cannot sort out the market access and fair play we will talk until cows come home. Thank you. Thanks very much. Market access I know it is a key drive for you Minister Adesina. Yeah, absolutely. I think market access has to be looked at Chris in two ways. One is the domestic market. We are a huge population in Africa but we will be using that population to buy imported food and I think as we do that we are exporting jobs into all those developed countries that you are mentioning without actually creating jobs at home. So we actually have to grow the size of the domestic market. If you take staple crops today in Africa the size of that staple crop market is 55 billion dollars. We have to create wider regional markets for ourselves to be able to actually export and secondly is that we must process and add value to all the staple crops that we have. For example, if you have tomatoes, if you have pineapples, if you have cassava we are going to add value to that and as you do that you actually create local market. I mean you mentioned right now my favorite issue which has to do with cassava bread. In Nigeria when we decided we were going to process cassava to high quality cassava flour to replace a lot of the wheat and the reason for it is that when we do that we create markets locally. We actually increase the incomes of farmers and we save ourselves close to 1.5 billion dollars in doing that. So I think we must look not just at markets outside. We must look at markets inside and create those markets by adding value to what we also produce. The minister has to go to the floor, you sir and then you ma'am are up next. Thank you. My name is Hussam Mahmoud, I'm the CEO and I'm focused on the security food program of UEE and we are present in 12 countries today where we do farming processing storage for our crops logistics and also the trading. We do believe that Africa and especially West Africa as a Southeast Africa can be a very good partner for our program by supplying these crops to Middle East countries because of the security and the land. But in order to do this we need huge plots of lands and to bring all our technologies and infrastructure in these countries and how can we do this? Thank you very much. Could we get the mic to this lady in the front please? Thank you. An answer on that front. Philip would you like to take it? Yeah thank you. Let's say that we farmers of East Africa are not anti foreign and direct investments but we have a feeling that we need to turn it around because for us it's actually supposed to be an opportunity and we need to actually produce for those markets and that's why we are telling our governments that instead of actually giving away land why don't you actually invest in us so that we can actually take advantage of your markets. I think where investors can actually come in well in that particular process is around areas where we need capacity in processing because some of the products that we actually need to sell to your markets will require processing so that they can actually stay longer and I think we can actually be able to partner but still in the region we have actually seen situation where there is actually partnership between farmer and foreign investors especially among us, our large scale farmers who got land is not very productive for now and they need ventures and I think there is actually that space but for the small scale farmers we don't want to turn the attention of governments getting the governments to actually address issues of food security using investments for purposes of sovereignty we need to actually see governments investing us so that we can actually be able to do business with them. Thanks so much a quick one Minister Adesina can you take questions after the broadcast from the rest of our audience? I think just to say that the way for Africa is to have structured purchase agreements like that with countries and then we can have farmers to meet that because the most important thing for you is that you have the right volume of produce supply and time and cost effectively for you and so it's got to be a partnership that it's a double wind partnership but Africa should not be afraid of growth we shouldn't be afraid of markets we should take advantage of those markets in a way that works for millions and millions of our farmers. Thank you very much well that brings us to the end of this discussion on investing in transformation in agriculture across the African continent it's clear that we need to search in the need or the search for food security and poverty alleviation we need multi-stakeholder engagement. Thank you so much to my esteemed panellists from me Bronwyn Nielsen thank you for coming until next time thank you very much we do have some more time in terms of the scheduled sessions so can I take your question thank you very much if you could stand please I thought my shortness was probably going to give me trouble my name is Rose Phillips I'm from Accenture and we're with a management consulting company that have decided to heavily invest in Africa over many years and I do recognize that investment in Africa is transformation because transformation makes sure that we don't leave people marginalized and my major concern is as we commercialize as we talk about creating business in agriculture we do have the potential of leaving behind the marginalized so we're talking about poverty alleviation but I do worry that as we become commercial as we turn from subsistence into business we are going to in a sense make poverty worse because those people that are living on subsistence farming that sending their children to school based on their farming capability are going to lose that and I worry that we talk a lot about the commercialization and not enough about the sustainability and the growth for all of our people on the continent that's my first comment and one is I really just want us to talk about water because I think water as we all know is a very scarce resource and will be more and more scarce and I haven't heard us really address the issue of water so those are my two comments and questions to the panel Thank you very much the issue of water Jane I think maybe we misunderstood each other but the commercialization is actually seeing an existing subsistence farmer seeing him or herself as a business being a slave like Chris Putsett starts earning a bit more for their hard labor so it's not displacing those people it's improving the productivity of those people so they can make better their lives I think in terms of I think we didn't talk about it but its sustainability is was implied when I was talking about end to end de-risking the whole chain so you're not de-risking just for today you're also de-risking for future so if you talk about agronomy or wet pesticides you use or what whether you're using irrigation or you're using rain fed you have to do it in a way that you protect the environment and the world for generations to come so we didn't call it out but it is implied there Can I make a comment on your question or concern about the subsistence farmer you know I have been in agriculture for close to 25-26 years I have never met a single subsistence farmer and I'll explain myself you know nobody chooses to be a subsistence farmer the only farmers that I have met that are small-holder farmers that are constrained by lack of access to land lack of access to capital lack of access to extension information and market access all that is what constrains them to be where they are so what we are actually talking about is when you have agribusinesses that are setting off for example a start processing plant they are going to be structured in such a way that they have ag growers those farmers are producing for them so that increases market access and actually stabilizes prices for them my view is that agriculture in this continent for so long has taken that perspective of poverty reduction and I think it's not a right lens we must begin to look at it from a lens of creating wealth and when you create wealth you do that via markets and you structure institutions and arrangements that make sure that the small-holder farmers participate, engage and benefit from that so let's forget all about the poverty reduction thing it doesn't work it is all about wealth creation and if you are going to create wealth you really absolutely must have markets but actually have fair markets that can create robust growth thank you minister Adesina and I've been told we have to end so just very quickly one comment from you I would say this is about water agriculture uses way too much water and there are plenty of agronomic practices I wish that by a great deal and we need to get on with it thank you very much, appreciate it thank you so much for being a Black audience