Ayade Identifies Path to Africa’s Growth, Greatness
Cross River State Governor, Prof. Ben Ayade, has urged African countries to undertake agro-industrial revolution if it must shake off the ugly tag of under-development and backwardness.
Ayade was speaking as the chief host of the 2019 Africa Industrialisation Day (AID) organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, in Calabar.
He said while the need to industrialise Africa has become pertinent and urgent, the continent must make sure that the right steps are taken if the objective must be achieved.
According to him, “agroindustrial revolution is the first step to take. It is indeed, only agro-industrial revolution that allows you to industrialize, revolutionize your economy and yet carry the people along, because the essence of industrialisation is to create social harmony.
“The problem with Africa is the extemporaneous excitement of attitude to catch up with the Western world. In the process we miss the strategic steps that are required towards growth.”
He said it was against that background that his administration embarked on agro-industrial revolution through value-chain addition to agricultural processes.
“Today we have the garment factory employing over 3000 people with women constituting 85 per cent of that workforce. We have a philosophy of going from farm to fabric. So our cotton farm in Yala Local Government Area in partnership with Arewa Textile is helping to create the raw materials that we require in other to have our own knitting and our own fabrics that can turn into garments.”
“That is agro-industrial revolution. “We have the Cross River State noodles factory, which depends mostly on rice, because the use of wheat has been found to have high level of gluten. Today in Cross River State, we have a feed mill.
“Today, Cross River State has a factory that will be producing 24000 frozen chicken per day. As such we need a huge quantity of maize and soya beans for feed production. This will create an agricultural value chain that will create an enabling environment for you to massively cultivate new farm lands to support the cultivation of maize and soya beans, in the process creating jobs and linking people to farm and linking the farms and produce to agriculture and linking them ultimately to the industries. That is the connectivity and that is why agro-industrial revolution is always the first.