{"id":14051,"date":"2017-04-17T19:10:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:10:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=14051"},"modified":"2017-04-17T19:10:24","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:10:24","slug":"dangote-will-be-the-largest-exporter-of-rice-in-5-years-afdb-president","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/?p=14051","title":{"rendered":"Dangote will be the largest exporter of rice in 5 years &#8211; AfDB President"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), says billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote <\/span><span lang=\"EN-GB\"> may become the largest exporter of rice in the world by 2021.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\">Speaking at the Mo Ibrahim Forum in Morocco over the weekend, Adesina said Africa must focus on agriculture to drive growth and create jobs on the continent.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><code><script async src=\"\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js\"><\/script><br \/>\n<!-- www.deltanewsroom.com --><br \/>\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" style=\"display: block;\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-2163942495525027\" data-ad-slot=\"1411897411\" data-ad-format=\"auto\"><\/ins><br \/>\n<script>\n(adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\n<\/script><\/code><\/p>\n<p>\u201cI remember when I was minister of Agriculture in Nigeria. Aliko Dangote was there, and he was our biggest importer at the time, and he and I used to have all the time to dialogue,\u201d Adesina said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cOne day, I was in my office, about <span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_278227849\"><span class=\"aQJ\">10 O\u2019clock<\/span><\/span>, Aliko walks in, Ngozi was minister of finance. Aliko bangs on my door and said \u2018minister I came to see you\u2019, and I said \u2018what are we going to disagree on this time?\u2019<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe said no, I have actually looked at the policies, and the policies you put in place for import substitution are very right policies. So, I have changed my business model from being an importer to being a local producer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Adesina narrated the role Dangote played in his happiest day as a minister in Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI said what exactly are you going to do. He said I will put in $300 million into producing and processing rice in Nigeria. I said yippee! I went home, I told my wife, my best day as minister,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe comes back three months after that, he says I have changed my mind, I said \u2018what in the world happened?\u2019 He said no, I have changed my mind from $300 million to a billion dollars.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf they continue that policy, he would probably be the single largest producer of rice in the world, in about four years. The reason why I was so excited about that is that agriculture is cool, agriculture is a business\u2026agriculture pays.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.alternativeadvert.com\/show.php?z=30&amp;pl=12895&amp;ad_type=59&amp;rl=180\" width=\"300\" height=\"250\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Adesina was named Forbes Africa Person of the Year 2013, while Dangote won the same award in 2014.<\/p>\n<p>It would be recalled that a tripartite agreement put together by the Dangote Rice limited to create jobs for 16,000 outgrower rice farmers in Sokoto was recently signed with the Sokoto State government and rice growers in the country after which he launched the rice outgrowers scheme in Sokoto.<\/p>\n<p>Aliko Dangote , the Chairman of Dangote Rice Limited, Asaid he was moved to go into rice cultivation because of the genuine interest of the Federal government to revive agriculture as the mainstay of the economy, and reduce importation of foods that could be produced locally.<\/p>\n<p>He lamented that Nigeria consumes 6.5 Mtn of rice which costs the nation over 2 billion dollars annually pointing out that it is heartening that the government now has policy direction that encourages private sector\u2019s active participation in agriculture.<\/p>\n<p>He disclosed then that \u201cIn the next three years we want to produce one million tons of quality rice and make it available and affordable to the people. We hope to do 150, 000 ha and when we are done, Nigeria will not have anything to do with importation of rice.<\/p>\n<p><span lang=\"EN-GB\"><a href=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dangote.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-14052\" src=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dangote-300x134.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"134\" srcset=\"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dangote-300x134.png 300w, http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dangote.png 670w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u201cDangote Rice outgrowers scheme is committed to creating significant number of jobs, increasing the incomes of smallholders farmers and ensuring food security in the country by providing high quality seeds, fertilizers and agro-chemicals as well as technical assistance on best agricultural practice to farmers.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This Scheme will help to diversify the economy, alleviate poverty and reduce the nation&#8217;s import bill. The scheme has been designed as a one stop solution for the rice value chain,&#8221; Dangote stated.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Akinwumi Adesina, president of the African Development Bank (AfDB), says billionaire businessman, Aliko Dangote may become the largest exporter of rice in the world by 2021. Speaking at the Mo Ibrahim Forum in Morocco over the weekend, Adesina said Africa must focus on agriculture to drive growth and create jobs on the continent. \u201cI remember [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":14052,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"spay_email":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[658,273],"class_list":["post-14051","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-akinwumi-adesina","tag-aliko-dangote"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/dangote.png","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4oswh-3ED","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14051","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14051"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14051\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14053,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14051\/revisions\/14053"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14052"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14051"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14051"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/newsroom247.com.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14051"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}