Nigeria offers farmland to Gulf investors


Nigeria is offering to lease farmland to Gulf countries seeking food security and will allow investors to export all of their produce, the head of a private Nigerian agriculture consultancy firm said.

Gulf countries reliant on food imports have intensified efforts over the last year to buy land in developing nations ranging from Pakistan to the Sudan and Ethiopia.

"Nigeria has the terrain to provide 100 percent of the Gulf's food needs," Enbong Jimie Idiong, chief executive of Global Corp, told Reuters in an interview on the sidelines of an industry conference in Dubai.

Global Corp is working as a consultant to the Nigerian government on ways to develop the agriculture sector, Idiong said.

Nigeria has around 71.2 million hectares of farmland, of which less that 50 percent is being used, according to data from the firm.

"We need investment to fully utilise this land and we will allow the investors to export back 100 percent of the crop and this will create employment opportunities for people in Nigeria," said Idiong.

The land could be leased for up to 30 to 40 years at a cost of around $10,000 per hectare for that period, he said.

"Because of the large size of land we can offer investors as much as they want, and there is no particular kind of crop that can't be grown in Nigeria."

For years Nigeria relied on oil production to fuel its growth, and paid little attention diversification, said Idiong.

"The oil is a curse, and all of these large oil companies are causing a lot of pollution and I think for our generation this is a time we need to pay more attention to developing agriculture."

Asked what type of guarantees could be presented to investors, a common concern for Gulf nations when considering investments in Africa, Idiong said the government would back any deals.

"Before you step in to invest one penny you will have a sovereign guarantee from the government," he said. Developing countries all over the world have been competing to attract foreign investors seeking food security to buy or lease land under attractive terms.

Last May, Pakistan offered investors 6 million acres of farmland to lease under long term agreements, but will require outsiders to share half of their crop with local growers.

So far Nigeria has not signed any deals with Gulf nations to lease farmland. "Regrettably this has to do with the attitude of our officials who are not proactive, I don't understand why Saudi and the UAE have gone to places like Pakistan and Sudan where climate and political conditions are less stable," said Idiong.

"We are just not marketing ourselves enough."

Foreign investors have acquired some 15-20 million hectares of farmland in poorer countries since 2006, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute.

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Quality Underlined As World Takes Stock Of Water, Sanitation


Global attention was once again on water as stakeholders last week underlined the need to improve the quality of the vital resource.


Courtesy of the United Nations General Assembly-designated World Water Day (WWD), the world on Monday explored issues related to water quality challenges and solutions. WWD 2010, the 17th in the series, had “Clean water for a healthy world” as its theme, apparently calling attention to a Millennium Development Goal (MDG) that seeks to halve the proportion of those without access to safe drinking water and sanitation in five years’ time.

The main celebrations of the WWD 2010, jointly hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Water and Sanitation (UNSGAB) and the Government of Kenya, held at the UNEP/UN-Habitat headquarters in Nairobi.

To illustrate the importance of water quality for ecosystem functioning, human wellbeing and livelihoods, the three-day event featured a panel discussion on “Water quality challenges and responses” as well as site visits to Lake Victoria, Kibera/Nairobi River and the Kenyan Coast.

http://www.independentngonline.com/DailyIndependent/Article.aspx?id=11035

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Targeted fertiliser can double banana yield



The weight of a banana crop can soar by up to 100 per cent when moderate amounts of specific inorganic fertilisers are applied, scientists in Uganda have shown.


Some 70 million people across Africa rely on bananas for food or income, but less than five per cent of banana farmers use any fertiliser, according to Piet van Asten, a system agronomist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), in Uganda, who conducted the study with Lydia Wairegi, a PhD student at Uganda's Makerere University.

They set up experiments with 200 banana fields in central and southwestern Uganda.

Analysing banana leaves allowed them to assess nutrient deficiencies and then apply specific fertiliser that would supply only those nutrients.

Even a modest application of a fertiliser doubled the yields from 10 to 20 tonnes per hectare per year in some areas in the study.

http://www.scidev.net/

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"Large" Rift Valley Fever outbreak in South Africa


An outbreak of Rift Valley Fever (RVF), described as "large" by South Africa's National Institute for Communicable Diseases (NICD), has claimed the lives of two people and poses a significant threat to livelihoods in major farming areas.


"It is difficult to provide a comparison of this outbreak with previous ones, as it is ongoing - at the moment it is a large and significant outbreak," said Prof Lucille Blumberg, deputy director of the NICD. Neighbouring Namibia has reportedly banned live animals and meat products from South Africa.

The livestock industry is the biggest agricultural sector and contributes up to 49 percent of agricultural output. "South Africa generally produces 85 percent of its meat requirements, while the remaining 15 percent is imported from Namibia, Botswana, Swaziland, Australia, New Zealand and Europe," the government's information website said.

RVF is a contagious viral infection transmitted to humans mainly by direct or indirect contact with the blood or organs of infected animals, especially domestic animals such as cattle, sheep, goats and camels. The disease has been confirmed in seven of South Africa's nine provinces, and has infected 60 people.

Among animals the RVF virus is spread primarily by the bite of infected mosquitoes, mainly the Aedes species, which can acquire the virus from feeding on infected animals, according to the World Health Organization.

Heavy summer rain over large parts of South Africa in the past few months has created good conditions for the RVF virus to thrive. "We are hoping for some cold weather," Blumberg said.

"There is no evidence of mosquito-transmitted human infection to date", the NICD said in a communiqué, and most human infections were the result of direct contact with infected animal tissue or fluids.

The last major outbreak of RVF in South Africa - 10,000 to 20,000 human cases - took place between 1974 and 1976 during prolonged heavy rains, according to the NICD. Small sporadic outbreaks have been recorded since then.

IRIN