Africa’s youth need investment, not ’empowerment’, to realise the continent’s potential and support food security, says the head of the African Development Bank
The African Development Bank plans to deploy billions of dollars to help young people build a new digitally-driven model of agriculture that can feed the continent’s people and boost prosperity even as the planet heats up, its president said.
At a global summit this week, the bank and the Global Center on Adaptation announced an initiative to strengthen African efforts to become more resilient to extreme weather and rising seas, threats worsened by fast-accelerating climate change.
The African Development Bank plans to put half of its climate finance towards the initiative – $12.5 billion between now and 2025 – and raise an equal amount from donor governments, the private sector and international climate funds.
Akinwumi Adesina, a former Nigerian agriculture minister who leads the bank, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Africa is struggling on two fronts – with the economic and health fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as climate shocks.
Drought, floods, creeping deserts and climate-fuelled locust attacks are forcing down crop yields and driving up hunger and migration on the continent, he said. Read more…
