AU applauds Zim agric sector

ZIMBABWE’s agricultural sector is poised for growth, premised on robust policies and projects that the country is implementing, the African Union has said.

AU’s Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture Ms Rhoda Peace Tumusiime said Zimbabwe was one of 40 countries in Africa that had signed agreements with the AU to implement strategies to develop agriculture.

She was responding to questions while briefing journalists on efforts undertaken by the continent to rebuild agriculture.

Zimbabwe is one of the countries that have signed compacts (agreements) making it a priority to develop agriculture.

They should go beyond this and ensure successful implementation.

“Agriculture must be seen as a business. Agriculture must pay. This is what we are working on and we are on the right track,” said Ms Tumusiime.

The sector has immense potential to transform economies on the continent.

Although it had been previously relegated, the past decade had seen agriculture becoming the in-thing .

Many economies in Africa were on a rebound because of agriculture.

Zimbabwe’s economy is largely agriculture-based. At least 65 percent of inputs in the manufacturing sector come from the fields while the bulk of exports are agriculture-based. Over the past few months, the country has launched Command Agriculture, where farmers have been supplied with inputs to produce at least two million tonnes of maize this season.

Such initiatives as the Presidential Inputs Support Scheme, finance facilities by banks, contract farming mainly for tobacco and cotton, have been employed to boost production.

In his 2017 National Budget presentation, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said more facilities would be put in place to restore the sector whose growth had been compromised by successive droughts.

This season looks promising given the rains Zimbabwe has received over the past few weeks. Ms Tumusiime said there was much scope in investing in agriculture to increase both production and productivity levels. Ideally, the AU expected governments to allocate 10 percent of their budgets towards agriculture but so far the average was 4 percent. This was, however, an improvement from 2 percent a decade ago.

“Agriculture must absorb at least a third of the unemployed people on the continent. This is the moment we need to make agriculture work,” said Ms Tumusiime.

She warned that climate change was real and the continent needed to come up with strategies at community level to build resistance and mitigate its effect.

The 28th AU Summit began here on January 21 under the theme “Harnessing the Demographic Dividend Through Investments in the Youth .

A number of pre-summit meetings and sectoral discussions on women and the youth, gender and other issues that affect the continent are being held in the run-up to the Heads of State and Government meetings scheduled for this weekend.