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The Central Bank has stated that the sale of the rescued banks will be made open to all willing investors, local and foreign, even if they are old owners of the banks.

The Central Bank’s spokesperson, Mohammed Abdullahi, said it is a free and fair competition for willing individuals.

“As far as we are concerned, anybody that is bringing the money in for recapitalisation is free to compete, subject to the conditions that we have drafted and that they are aware of. However, it should be clear that we are not returning the banks to the former owners.

If they have the money to recapitalise the banks, and can also afford to return the money the Central Bank used to bail the banks out, they are welcome. It is open to everybody. There is no restriction there,” he said.
Old shareholders show interest

Speculations are rife that old shareholders of the rescued banks are interested in buying back the banks.
A source at Oceanic Bank said that major old shareholders are interested in buying back the bank. “I do not think this should be a controversial issue.

There should be a fair ground for intending investors, irrespective of whether they used to be shareholders here or not. The recapitalisation is in progress and former shareholders are already indicating that they want to reinvest in the bank,” he said, declining to reveal the identities of the interested parties.

“Everything is possible within the environment we find ourselves,” a source at FinBank said. “Even the Central Bank brought up the idea that they may grant the bank shareholders an opportunity to recapitalise if they are capable, so it’s been in the public discourse. However, narrowing it down to FinBank, it is not to my knowledge that there are moves by old shareholders to buy back and you know that there is no formal way to know until it is communicated to us officially,” he said.

The story was the same at Intercontinental Bank, where an official said that there is no official notification by the old owners of the bank indicating a buy back. “I have made enquiries. Presently, there is nothing like that happening now,” he said.

Last month, the Central Bank announced that it held an interactive meeting with the shareholders of the 10 affected banks comprising their directors and principal shareholders. According to Mr. Abdullahi, the objective of the meeting was to inform the stakeholders on plans for the implementation of the second phase of the banking sector reforms.

The banks comprised of Afribank Plc, Bank PHB, Equitorial Trust Bank Ltd., FinBank Plc, Intercontinental Bank Plc, Oceanic Bank International Plc, Spring Bank Plc, Unity Bank Plc, Union Bank of Nigeria Plc, and Wema Bank Plc, who were represented by their respective board members, management and independent shareholders.
Equatorial Bank’s case

Although old shareholders may feel free to compete with other investors to own shares of the rescued banks when the banks are fully up for recapitalisation (which is already in progress), any bank whose shareholders desire to outright buy back will go through stated terms and conditions relating to the specific objections raised by the regulatory body, Mr. Abdullahi explained.

Among the 10 banks, only Equitorial Trust Bank’s shareholders have officially indicated to be allowed to rectify its shortcomings. In a statement issued by the Central Bank the shareholders executed a deed of covenant, with specific terms and conditions.

In granting the bank’s requests, the CBN noted that “the Special Examination had not raised issues of serious supervisory concern or criminal activity by any member of the Board of ETB,” adding that it will closely monitor the implementation of the terms of the covenant to ensure that the lapses are fully rectified and in the overall interest of the banking system.

The on-going
financial sector reforms and revelation of the true state of health of
Nigeria’s banking industry, makes a strong case for investments, Atedo
Peterside, chairman of the Stanbic IBTC Bank, said during the ‘Stanbic
IBTC 2010 Investor’s Conference’ in Lagos on Monday.

The three-day
conference is focused exclusively on the Nigerian economy with emphasis
on the capital market. The last two years have been turbulent for
financial markets around the world, including Nigeria. The Nigeria
Stock Exchange’s (NSE) all share index has recorded double digit
negative returns in the last two years, crashing from an all-time high
of 66, 731.20 in March 2008.

With a current all share index of 22,985.00, investors seeking for long-term returns can venture into the capital.

“Accordingly, in
tune with the theme of this conference: ‘Connect. Inform. Optimise,’ we
urge all participants to connect with each other and network as much as
possible; obtain information about your investment targets, and please
remember that Stanbic IBTC has an excellent research team with award
winning analysts and robust reports available to assist you to decide
on your investment priorities.”

Major crossroad

But Mr. Peterside
could not resist the urge to comment on the present political reality
in the country and the uncertainty that it has generated both locally,
and on the foreign scene.

“When the idea of
this conference was first discussed some months ago, I never imagined
that the range of questions from the overseas participants would
include several with a political slant,” he said. “As we all know,
these questions were prompted by recent political developments.
Unfortunately, I am unable to provide answers to some of the most
pertinent political questions. I can however, assure you that many of
us are asking these same ‘hard’ questions to key members of the
Executive and Legislative arms of our government and we promise to give
you meaningful feedback as soon as we have credible answers…

“My personal belief
is that Nigeria is currently at a ‘major crossroad.’ The crossroad I
speak of is in the political arena and in some ways it is about a
struggle between Good and Evil, a struggle between the Truth and Lies.”

But he assured investors that “the truth will soon prevail.”

“The foundations
upon which Stanbic IBTC Stockbrokers Limited built its business model
from day one was a desire to attempt to tell investors the truth at all
times regarding the things that we do know and to be humble enough to
admit what we do not know… we are in the business of attempting to
guide investors and interacting with them continuously. We are however,
not in the business of deliberately deceiving or misinforming them.”

A major player

Stanbic IBTC
Stockbrokers is owned by the Stanbic IBTC Bank, a member of the South
African-owned Standard Bank Group, and is said to account for over 20
percent stock market in 2009.

The bank, through
its wholly owned stock broking and asset management subsidiary, IBTC
Asset Management Limited, has several excellent mutual funds including
the IBTC Nigerian Equity Fund, which is Nigeria’s largest mutual fund
with a net asset value in excess of N25 billion (as at December 2007).
It is the only bank that has a direct subsidiary that is a pension fund
administrator, through the market leading IBTC Pension Managers Limited
(IPML).

As at 30th
September, 2009, indicated profitability declined to N3.7 billion, a 65
percent decrease from the same period for 2008. For capital adequacy,
the Stanbic IBTC Plc has a 33 percentage ratio, compared to the 10
percent statutory requirement by the CBN.

Nigeria’s United
Bank of Africa (UBA) has started operating in Zambia with a capital
investment of $15 million as it seeks to expand its influence on the
African continent, Chief Executive Officer Abba Bello said on Thursday.

Mr. Bello told
Reuters one UBA branch was already operational in Lusaka and the bank
planned to open two more in the country’s mining towns on the
Copperbelt and another in Solwezi, which hosts two key mines in
Africa’s largest copper producer.

“Our focus is on
wholesale and retail and we play in all sectors of any economy that we
are in, so when you say mining, yes we will be in mining but we will be
in all sectors of wholesale space in Zambia and we will support that
with retail play,” Mr. Bello said.

Mr. Bello said UBA hoped its growing influence in Africa would help boost trade and spur the continent’s economic growth.

“UBA is here as a
vehicle to ensure that Africans have their own bank that can assist in
empowering indigenous Africans in growing intra-African trade and trade
between Africa and the rest of the world,” he said.

Mr. Bello said with the start of operations in Zambia, UBA was now present in 17 countries in Africa.

In October, UBA
launched its Kenyan operation to compete with pan-African group Ecobank
Transnational Inc which began working in Kenya in 2008.

Bello said the competition, brought about by the opening of more
banks in Zambia, which now has 18 banks, and favourable economic
indicators in recent months would help bring down interest rates.

The newspaper headlines, as usual, differed from the content of
the news stories they pointed to. However, the gist of it all was that at a
recent conference in Lagos, the Minister of State for Finance, and the Governor
of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), did not quite see eye-to-eye on the apex
bank’s current reform initiatives.

I seriously doubt, to begin with, that as the media reported,
the honourable minister questioned the necessity for the CBN’s operational and
statutory independence. Despite the sundry dislocations occasioned by the
global financial crisis, a central bank’s independence is not one of the values
that have been called to question. Even in economies such as ours, where
governments have made a good fist of their work, this concept has played a key
role in achieving low inflation.

Still, we could differ on the chances that we would always get
competent hands to run the central bank to ensure that its medium-term take on
price directions in the domestic economy are robust enough to act as a foil to
the politicians’ narrow focus on the short-term imperatives of the four-year
electoral cycle.

Nevertheless, we ought no longer to tolerate a situation where
fiscal and monetary policies are decided in the same room, by the same people
(especially, when this latter lot are beholden to political interests). Of
course, one lesson from the current crisis comes out of the fact that fiscal
policy did take up the slack once monetary policy reached its limits. I would
thus be in the vanguard of any call to strengthen collaboration between
monetary, regulatory, and fiscal policies going forward.

On the question of the central bank’s competence, it is hard to
conclude otherwise than that the incumbent governor has done this economy a
world of good. It is so illogical that we should clamour to trade in a final
cure (because of a near-term allergic reaction) for a major ailment. Of course
we now know that it is proper policy to maintain a firewall between regulators
and the industry they regulate. It is obvious too, that banks occupy a hallowed
place in the economy; although we’d always suspected this from the relationship
that existed between demand deposits, which sit on the liabilities side of
banks’ balance sheets, and the credits they create which sit on the asset side.
Once impaired, especially by the markets’ beginning to question the soundness
and stability of the system, the resulting runs on deposits, affects the
industry’s ability to create loans. Unfortunately, banks’ ability to create
loans on a sustainable basis does matter for any economy’s growth.

The central bank governor

What about the person of the central bank governor? Sanusi
Lamido Sanusi has been described as too showy; a caudillo. In mitigation, we’ve
heard arguments in favour of “stronger institutions”; and inscrutability as a
preferred attribute. Now, I cannot recall many strong institutions that have
been built on the back of invertebrate leadership. Conversely, the gnomic Alan
Greenspan is often indicated as the ultimate model of a central bank governor.
How useful is this? If any financial market took its cue from the coordinates
of its central bank governor’s eyebrow, this was undoubtedly because the market
works well, and that this semaphore had been integrated in its signalling
mechanisms.

But the point of the CBN’s current work is the fact that the
domestic industry had become a burlesque of bank practices. Markets were skewed
so badly that the price mechanism worked selectively, and interested party
transactions held sway over many business decisions.

Financial accounting was a joke. The flipside of this is that as
we make our way tentatively out of the current crisis, we can no longer argue
that financial regulation should remain outside the macroeconomic framework.

When the CBN governor says the reforms are a process, not a
destination, it is my understanding that the apex bank is moving from financial
regulation as a tool for addressing the failings it has since discovered in the
industry, towards using its capacity to design prudential rules for the
industry, to address broader macroeconomic questions, including using it to
moderate the boom-bust cycle.

The nation’s equity market posted a positive outlook on Thursday after it recorded a decline on Wednesday.

The
market capitalisation of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), yesterday,
gained about N22 billion to close at N5.567 trillion from the previous
day’s figure of N5.545 trillion. The market capitalisation had on
Wednesday lost over N10 billion.

Also, the Stock Exchange All-Share Index closed higher at 23,115.25 basis points from the 23,023.10 recorded on Wednesday.

At
the close of trading on Thursday, three of the four sectoral indices
appreciated. The Food and Beverages Index appreciated by 0.13 per cent
to close at 607.31, the Banking Index gained 0.94 per cent to close at
385.13, Oil and Gas Index appreciated by 0.25 per cent to close at
294.65, while the Insurance Index declined by 0.23 per cent to close at
209.06. Meanwhile, the NSE-30 rose by 0.44 per cent to close at 923.65.

Market evaluation

Evaluating
the market performance yesterday, Stock Analysts at Proshare Nigeria
Limited said the positive outlook recorded was, notwithstanding the
“noticeable improvement in the banking sector performance with five of
the shares traded in the sector emerging in the class of the day’s top
10 gainers.” They also added that the market recorded gains because the
food and beverages sector’s outlook was positive with indications of
improvement in the building materials and petroleum marketing sectors.

However,
the analysts said that stocks in breweries and conglomerates sector are
still in their passive outlook with most likely to rebound if the
positive trend continues.

Leading subsectors

The
banking subsector maintained its lead as the most active with 130.277
million shares, valued at over N967.874 million. The subsector’s volume
was driven by shares of Ecobank Nigeria, Diamond Bank, First Bank, and
Access Bank.

Trading
activities in the insurance subsector was second with 116.077 million
shares worth N84.445 million. Volume in the subsector was boosted by
deals in shares of Africa Alliance Insurance, Goldlink Insurance, NEM
Insurance Company, and International Energy Insurance.

The
conglomerates subsector followed in the activity chart with 13.737
million shares valued at N71.517 million. Transnational Corporation, PZ
Cussons Nigeria, Unilever, and UAC Nigeria boosted the subsector’s
volume.

Gainers and losers

Lafarge
Wapco and United Bank for Africa topped the price gainers’ table with
an increase of 81 kobo and 60 kobo on their opening prices of N34.18
and N13.00 per share respectively. African Petroleum and Chemical &
Allied Products followed in the chart with an increase of 54 kobo and
51 kobo, to close at N38.60 and N25.78 per share.

Flour
Mills Nigeria and Beta Glass led the price losers’ chart with a loss of
N2.04 and 71 kobo, to close at N46.02 and N13.55 per share, while
Julius Berger Nigeria and Nigerian Aviation Handling Company followed
with a decrease of 50 kobo and 31 kobo on their initial prices of
N28.50 and N8.50 per share respectively.

Mixed performance

Meanwhile, stock markets across the globe, on Thursday, experienced mixed performances.

The
France SBF 80 Index appreciated marginally by 0.09 per cent; the Norway
OSE Industry Index appreciated by 0.07 per cent; the Germany MDAX also
gain 0.05 per cent; the Sweden OMX Index was up by 1.00 per cent,
however, the Europe DJ Stoxx Index and the Netherland AEX Index
declined by 0.02 and 0.24 per cent respectively.

Also,
the Australian Securities Exchange’ ASX100 depreciated by 0.29 per
cent, while the Hong Kong’ Hang Seng went down by 0.54 per cent.

The Central Bank of
Nigeria (CBN) says it has expanded the number of departments under its
establishment to 25, up from previous 17 departments, due to the
ongoing banking reforms industry.

The new organisational structure becomes effective on March 1.

It is uncertain
what factors necessitated the expansion rather than cutting down on the
number of its departments, and workforce, which many believe are
already over-bloated and responsible for the lax supervision and
monitoring of financial operations leading to the crisis in the
industry.

The spokesman for
the CBN, Mohammed Abdullahi, could not give explanations to these, as
he refused to pick his calls when NEXT contacted him.

But the Central
Bank said in the statement that the move is the product of an exercise
it carried out in July last year, with the view to promoting efficient
and effective operations and in conformity with global best practise,
among others.

Announcing the cuts
in a statement issued online yesterday, the banking industry regulator
explained, “As part of the ongoing efforts aimed at improving
accountability, communication and efficiency as well as effectiveness
in actualising CBN’s strategic objectives (ACE), the Board of CBN has
approved a new organisation structure for the Bank, effective March
1st, 2010.”

The CBN statement
listed the objectives of the new structure to include “The development
of a more functional organisation structure, alignment of the structure
in line with the Bank’s mandate and strategy, promotion of efficient
and effective operations, building synergy with both internal and
external stakeholders of the Bank, facilitation of information flow and
integrated data management, and facilitation of the achievement of key
deliverables of management in conformity with global best practice.”

The new structure

According to the
Central Bank, the new structure will be run under the leadership of
five directorates which include the Governors, Corporate Services,
Economic Policy, Financial System Stability and Operations, which, in
turn will be divided into 25 departments under their respective
leadership, adding that there will now be 91 divisions and 198 offices.

The Central Bank of Nigeria embarked on an industry wide reforms
last year, under the leadership of Sanusi Lamido Sanusi in June 2009.
The reforms have so far seen some bank chiefs exit their positions and
about $4 billion invested to bailout ailing banks on grounds of
excessively high level of non-performing loans in the five banks which
was attributable to poor corporate governance practices, lax credit
administration processes and the absence or non-adherence to the bank’s
credit risk management practices.

Unilever Nigeria
Plc has earmarked N25.2 million for the provision of boreholes and
toilets as part of its contribution to the promotion of the Water,
Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) Campaign.

Thomas Boedinger,
the company’s Managing Director, made the announcement on Wednesday at
Okpoga, Benue State, during a WASH campaign organised in conjunction
with WaterAid Nigeria.

The campaign was organised for primary schools in Okpokwu, Ogbadibo and Ado Local Government Areas of the state.

Mr. Boedinger, represented by Yemi Adeboye, said the campaign was a
testimony of Unilever’s concern for the welfare of its customers.

Consumer prices in
China rose 2.7 per cent in February over the year-earlier period,
according to data released on Thursday, partly attributable to the
Lunar New Year holiday but also to the rising inflationary pressures in
China’s economy.

Other data, on
Thursday, reflected China’s continued strong recovery from the global
economic crisis. For the combined January to February period, which
factors out distortions from the Lunar New Year holidays, industrial
output expanded by 20.7 percent and retail sales rose 18 per cent
compared to a year ago.

Those figures followed data on Wednesday that showed robust growth in both China’s exports and imports in February.

No shift in economic policy

Overall, economists
said the picture suggests no shift in economic policy is in store,
although interest rates on loans are likely to rise as China strives to
hold down inflation.

While inflationary
pressures are clearly building, “current inflation is still modest,”
said Ken Peng, an economist with Citigroup Global Markets in Beijing.
“Right now, we are still okay. This is not going to cause any panic
among policy makers.”

Jinny Yan, an
economist with Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai, said the data
released this week does not suggest China’s economy is overheating,
despite pockets of speculation, especially in the red-hot property
market.

“We see the recovery continuing to keep its momentum,” she said. “The policy makers will continue to hold their stance.”

Drop in food production

China’s leaders
insist that inflation as firmly in check, below the government’s target
of three percent. The 2.7 per cent increase in February followed a 1.5
percent increase in January. Food prices led the way, a potentially
troublesome sign for the leaders of a country where as much as 40 per
cent of poorer household budgets go to food.

But prices are
typically jacked up during the Chinese New Year holidays, when families
tend to splurge on food and gifts. The National Bureau of Statistics
also blamed the harsh winter, which it said hurt food production.

A spokesman for the
bureau, Sheng Laiyun, predicted prices would come down after the spring
harvests. “We don’t see any signs of economic overheating,” he said.

China’s deputy
central bank governor, Su Ning, told reporters last week: “We believe
we can successfully contain inflationary pressure this year.” He said
the bank was more concerned last year, when prices fell for nine months.

“While we don’t
want to see prices rising too fast, the current situation is necessary
for the development of our economy and cannot be described as
inflation,” he said.

Other data released
on Thursday showed the government’s efforts to rein in loans after last
year’s lending spree, which was designed to spur the economy. Chinese
banks lent only about half as much money in February as they did in
January.

Premier Wen Jiabao
announced that China would lower its lending target for this year to
7.5 trillion renminbi, or $1.1 trillion, about 72 per cent of the 9.6
trillion renminbi in 2009.

The central
government, twice this year, increased the amount of money that banks
are required to deposit with the central bank as a monetary reserve
rather than lend to customers.

Many economists predict one or more interest rate increases in the
coming months, but higher interest rates are unlikely to threaten
China’s economic recovery because growth is governed more by the
availability of loans more than their cost, economists said.

The
Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), major oil marketers and
depot owners have set out to replenish the national strategic fuel
stock that was depleted during the last nationwide scarcity that lasted
more than two months.

The
NNPC ‘War Room’ ad-hoc group created by the management of the company
to tackle the scarcity says it is coordinating the provision of volumes
of premium motor spirits (Petrol) to filling stations throughout the
country while it is filling the strategic stock.

“The
strategy is to provide extra volume of products so that the balance
could be channelled towards building the national strategic stock which
was depleted at the height of the fuel supply/ distribution challenge,”
said Farouk Ahmed, a member of the group who doubles as the Executive
Director, Commercial of the Pipelines and Products Marketing Company
(PPMC), a subsidiary of the NNPC.

“Now
we are moving beyond just eliminating the fuel queues to a point where
we can build up inventory to act as quick intervention in case of line
breaks or unexpected shortfalls. The idea is to use some of our depots
like Ilorin, Kaduna, Suleja and Port Harcourt to build up stocks.”

In
line with this new strategy, a record quantity of 10,142 trucks, the
equivalent of about 334.6 million litres of fuel, has been distributed
nationwide within the last one week according to the NNPC. This figure
translates to a daily average distribution of about 1,448 trucks or
47.7million litres of PMS, he explained.

National average surpassed

Mr.
Ahmed said the War Room has exceeded its average national weekly target
of 1300 trucks (per day), or 42.9 million litres with an additional
4.8million litres. This new daily average distribution also surpasses
the daily national fuel consumption volume which stands at 33million
litres.

A
breakdown of the War Room’s weekly loading chart for the period
indicates a haul of 131.4 million litres of fuel in 3,982 trucks were
distributed nationwide last weekend.

The NNPC War Room was inaugurated on January 29 by Mohammed Sanusi Barkindo, the NNPC’s Group Managing Director.

The
body was charged with ending the intractable fuel supply and
distribution challenges at the time in 72 hours. Within 48 hours of its
existence appreciable respite returned and the queues at filling
stations began to ease, particularly in the major cities nationwide.

The
group, whose membership is drawn from staff across the NNPC’s fuel
supply chain from marine to retail, is headed Austen Oniwon, Group
Executive Director (GED), Refineries and Petro-Chemicals, and Aminu
Baba-Kusa, GED Commercial and Investment.

Operators
in the industry say they are happy with the current distribution of
petroleum products and are optimistic the scarcity issue will be
corrected.

Tokunbo
Korodo, the Lagos Zone chairperson of the National Union of Petroleum
and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG) said, “I believe they have the
capacity and capability to do it if they so decide because with the
current status of distribution, it’s quite commendable. So if they can
maintain this tempo, we will not be talking of scarcity again.”

The NUPENG leader implored all parties to cooperate to ensure that the current fuel distribution level is sustained.

“Let the major oil marketers complement the efforts of the NNPC by bring in more fuel into country, Mr. Korodo said.

“They
should not allow only NNPC to the job, if there’s any money to be
settled between the two parties, the earlier the better so that
Nigerians will not suffer.”

Small scale farmers
have complained about being excluded from financial aids provided by
the various agricultural funds floated by the federal government and
other donor agencies.

They say this is part of the reasons for the high consumer inflation prevalent in the country.

Comfort Olaosun,
president of the Cassava Growers and Processors Association, Osun state
chapter, said peasant farmers’ inability to access funds set aside by
government is frustrating government’s effort to enhance agriculture
development in the country.

“Government has
been clamouring about enhancing food cultivation in the country and we
have been reading about various efforts and loan packages on the pages
of newspapers; unfortunately, nobody I know has received money from any
of the funds,” he said. “We just read about it on the pages of the
papers. We are not even sure if anybody has received it. At least to my
best of knowledge no small scale farmer in Osun state has received part
of any of the loan and this is affecting our activities because we only
cultivate what we can afford to maintain,” she said.

Agricultural credits

The federal and
state governments in 2009 rolled out various agricultural funding
schemes, aside from the budgetary allocations for the agricultural
sector, aimed at encouraging more farmers to go into food production
for security and export purposes.

Part of the federal
government effort was the launch of the N200 billion Commercial
Agriculture Credit Scheme, out of which 100 billion was given to First
Bank of Nigeria plc and United Bank of Africa to disburse to farmers.

The governor of the
Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, was quoted as
saying that 656,000 farmers have so far benefited from about N42
billion provided by the agriculture credit guarantee fund since its
establishment in 1978.

Mr. Sanusi said the
N200 billion credit scheme, which is a seven-year single digit loan
aimed at encouraging value chain activities in Nigeria, is now
available to farmers.

However, small scale farmers argue that the manner in which the loan is administered, only favours the commercial farmers.

Organic foods

Also in a related
development, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation
(FAO), earlier in the week said that about 5000 West African farmers
are currently able to take advantage of the growing popularity of
organic foods in industrialised countries.

The increasing
interest is attributed to the $2.4 million German-backed programme that
has helped the farmers meet the necessary certification and other
requirements.

The market for
organic and fair-trade products in developed countries is expected to
grow by about five to 10 percent annually over the next three years,
offering new opportunities for smallholder farmers in poor countries.
However, these poor farmers struggle to comply with high-level food
standards in the developed countries and the need to meet certification
requirements.

Furthermore, to
enter organic markets, the farmers first have to go through a
conversion period from conventional to organic agriculture during which
they tend to incur higher costs as a result of applying new organic
techniques without obtaining the higher prices usually associated with
the organic label.

Agro-industry development

Meanwhile, African
Heads of State participating at the on-going High Level Conference on
the Development of Agri-business and Agro-Industries in Africa (3ADI)
in Abuja have articulated a seven point declaration to accelerate the
development of agriculture in the continent.

The declaration,
according to them, iss to articulate the important role of agriculture
in national development for adequate resource allocation.

To ensure the sustainability of this policy thrust, they also
expressed commitment to the establishment of “requisite legal,
regulatory and institutional framework to support agri-business and
agro-industry development.”