Abuja — With the current level of agribusiness financing put at about $5 billion per year, total projected demand needed for the development of the sector between now and 2050 has been pegged at about $620.4 billion, with an annual demand of $6.5 billion.

Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Lamido Sanusi, made the disclosure on Monday at the High Level Conference on the Development of Agribusiness and Agro-Industries in Africa, pointing out that agricultural investments tend to be profitable in the long run, but such investments in Africa are in short supply.

Noting that funding from various sources has been declining over the years, the CBN chief said the scenario is what has assumed the exotic characterisation of the financing gap, which contemporary is facing, in its less than impressive efforts at developing agriculture in Africa.

According to him, "Globally, for example, the share of the official development assistance (ODA) to sub Saharan Africa's agriculture dropped from $1.450 billion in 1998 to $713 million in 2002. Also, most African governments' funding for agriculture is far less than the CAADP target of 10 per cent of national budgets, whereas agriculture contribute between 20 to 50 per cent to the nations' Gross Domestic Products (GDP) of these countries."

The CBN governor also noted that the private sector has also recorded a declining trend in agricultural financing, as agriculture has had a share of less than one per cent of the total Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of $31 billion to Africa in 2005.

According to Sanusi, various efforts by government, aids agencies and private sector to provide financing support to agriculture have shown a number of disturbing characteristics. "First, the sources of financing have fragmented. At the government realm for example, the comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), which is endorsed in Maputo by African governments late 2002 under the New Partnership for Africa' Development (NEPAD) framework has not been able to achieve its 10 per cent budgetary allocation to agriculture by African governments."

The total budget of $251 billion needed for the period 2002 to 2015 to successfully implement the CAADP agricultural development programme, the Governor said, is far from being met, adding that if Africa were to invest annual food import bill and aid of about of $22 billion to agriculture development, it would take the region less than a decade to achieve CAADP's development targets.