Lagos — In order for Africa to be liberated from hunger and unemployment among its youths, the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) recently advised the continent to embrace modern method of farming.

Director-General of UNIDO, Dr. Kandeh Yumkella, said this at the High Level Conference on Development of Agribusiness and Agro-industries in Africa which ended in Abuja recently.

According to him, we are doing Agribusiness the same way our ancestors were doing it 2000 years ago, this 21st century for us to meet up with the current situation there is need for us to embrace modern method of farming as to address unemployment problem in the Africa continent.

This is as the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan said Federal Government has injected about N542 billion to the development of Agriculture in the country.

Part of which N240 billion was injected to commercial agriculture especially in the area of production, processing, storage and market infrastructure development over the next three years, while Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) doled out 200 billion for some selected banks , also another 100 billion was injected into development of Nigeria's Cotton-Textile-Garment.

The Acting President, who agreed that Nigerian agricultural sector has suffered from being dominated by ageing farming, said the federal government of Nigeria has set in a motion a major milestone in Nigeria agricultural development programme.

In his words," in addressing the existing of shortcoming in the agriculture sector of the economy , the commercial Agriculture Development Programme (CADP) of the federal government of Nigeria as part of the National Programme for Agriculture and Food Security (NPAFS) has set motion in major milestone in Nigeria agricultural development programme. The overall objective of the programme is to contribute to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and objective of the country of 7- point agenda and vision 20:2020 development strategies, by addressing Nigeria's challenges of the critical infrastructure."

He assured the stakeholders that the incumbent administration has deliberately formulated a policy framework to encourage Public Private Partnership (PPP) in the commercial agriculture facilitated by the development of the relevant infrastructure, human and availability of unencumbered land to site the various projects.

In the presentation of UN Economic Commission for Africa(ECA) the representative of the Commission Economic Commission for Africa, Mr. Abdoulie Janneh, said UNECA has embarked in the advocacy of the development of the regional value chains for selected strategic agricultural commodities that were defined at the AU summit held in Abuja December 2006.

He also said the commission convicted that most Africa's annual food import bill of $33billion can be diverted to domestic production for regional and global trade , thereby contributing to reducing poverty and hunger and reposition the continent in the global economy, adding that this can be done provided that African farmers are increasingly connected to agricultural input and product market through vibrant agro-industrial and agribusiness sector.

In the same development, the minister of Agriculture and Water Resources, Dr. Sayyadi Ruma said while brief the newsmen after the event that no fewer than 20 Agro-industrial business will start in month time in other to energize agricultural sector of the economy,

He also said that the Federal Government will set up implementation committee in order to implement Abuja Declaration insisting that everything adopted at the event will be implemented by the country.

The programme which lasted for three days was attended by 40 African countries and 40 minister across the continent, the Prime Minister of Tanzania and Serria Lone President were in attendance with the Acting President Goodluck Jonathan .