Abuja — African Development Bank (ADB) yesterday, revealed plans to assist Nigeria in its bid to assess $50 million from the $22 billion Global Food Security Trust Fund (GFSTF) for implementation of various food security programmes across the world.

The ADB Manager, Agriculture and Agro-Industry, Dougou Keita, disclosed this to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Fatima Binta Bamidele, in Abuja.

He said: "The global agricultural food security programme (GAFSP) is a trust fund established when the G20 decided to support food security in the world following 2008 food crisis. Some $22 billion resources were pledged during the G20 meeting and some countries have contributed to that trust fund, including the US, Canada, Spain, and a secretariat for the trust fund has been established.

"There has been a first call for proposal which closed in June, a number of African countries including Rwanda got $50 million; Sierra Leone got $50 million and Togo got about $58 million. The second call will close on October 1 and we are assisting Nigeria to be ready for that second call for proposal to assess the global food security grant resources. Nigeria is requesting for $50 million.

"Considering the time remaining between now and the deadline, we felt that we should quickly come and work with our colleague in Nigeria and come up with a proposal that will be competitive enough. The resources are very limited because the competition is very high. We only have about $350 million and so the competition is going to be very high and we are taking this work very seriously." he said.

Dougou added that there's need for effective implementation of various projects in the country, urged Federal Government to increase investment in the agricultural sector in the bid to tackle the problem of unemployment and food security.

According to him, "we have about six operations of about $100 million of which some are closing. The pipeline is drying and another challenge is the quality of the portfolio. Even though the programme has been improving significantly from the past four months, a number of actions we have undertaken. We need to work hard to still improve that portfolio.

"That portfolio has not been performing and because we did not assess resources from ADF 11, from the current ADF we did not get any resources. That is why we are to concentrate and improve on the portfolio so that ADF 12 in January we will get some resources for agriculture because the critical role of agriculture in Nigerian development strategy is beyond demonstration in terms of food security, income generation and employment. I think this is the sector which should lead growth in Nigeria. There shouldn't be no reason why we shouldn't use concessionary ADF resources to develop the sector."

The Manager stated that ADB is also partnering with Food Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and ECOWAS in the area of 'study of the agricultural policies' and also working with ECOWAS in helping our member countries to assess the GAFSP resources.

In her response, Fatima Bamidele, urged the Bank to fast track the proposal on the NERICA Rice programme initiated by the ministry.