Here is a fragment from what I said at the World Economic Forum, in the session Africas Next Billion, where I took part together with Nigerias president, H.E. Goodluck Jonathan.my Good friend A new class of poor people was generated in Africa in the 70s and 80s, when we all went through structural adjustment programs. We were asked to withdraw all subsidies, especially to the poorest of the poor, who were in agriculture. We were not allowed to subsidize agriculture. And, yet, in the West agriculture was heavily subsidized. And so it made our economies heavily import dependent, for even food!, chicken and things that we have a comparative advantage to produce, to feed ourselves... Rice! If you look at the huge amount of money that was spent in my country, 500 million dollars every year, to import rice, while we have the capacity to grow enough rice to feed ourselves... So I think that structural adjustment created some problems. Now, the international financial institutions agree with us. They say - oh, yes, you can subsidize your farmers. And so were making a change, were seeing agricultural production grow up, were seeing farmers rising to the occasion, were changing the orientation of our farmers from being just peasant producers into seeing agriculture as a business. So a lot of things are changing and were doing social protection programs to make people feel inclusive... weforum.org/sessions/summary/africas-next-billion
Posted on: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 20:50:20 +0000
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