Sterling reaffirms support to agriculture

Sterling Bank Plc, has said the bank is ready and willing to invest more in Nigeria’s agricultural sector, having invested more than N100 billion; a figure that represents about 15 percent of the bank’s total loans portfolio, Abubakar Suleiman, managing director/CEO said.

He said this in his closing remarks at the Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA) 2022 with the theme: “Engineering a Trillion Dollar Agricultural Economy,” which was held recently both physically and virtually with more than 10,000 attendees from across the world.

Agriculture is one of the five sectors of the economy that the bank has focused its investments on since 2018 as part of her HEART of Sterling strategy. The others are health, education, transportation, and renewable energy.

Suleiman observed that apart from the Bank of Agriculture, he could not think of any other financial institution that has committed its resources to agricultural financing like Sterling Bank.

“When we started the journey about five years ago, we were very clear in our minds that we did not just want to make it a talk show and we have been changing the focus of the conversation from moving away from identifying problems to providing solutions and now we are bringing stakeholders together in a bid to effectively move the conversation forward with action.

“We started it because we wanted to focus on agricultural financing where there was a significant gap. Every time we meet a stakeholder or a regulator, we noticed a different perspective of what the problem was and therefore it becomes clear to us that if we do not bring all the stakeholders together to harmonise their views and understanding, we will continue to remain in the dark,” he said.

Hope Moses-Ashike

Hope Moses-Ashike is an Associate Editor, Banking and Finance, with more than a decade of experience reporting on Nigeria’s financial system and broader economy. She closely tracks market movements, monetary policy decisions, company disclosures, regulatory actions, economic indicators, and global developments, and interprets what they mean for businesses, investors, policymakers, and households. Her reporting helps readers understand complex issues such as inflation trends, foreign exchange market dynamics, interest rate decisions, bank performance, and investment risks. She also covers major international events and periodically travels to Washington, D.C., to report on the World Bank/IMF Spring and Annual Meetings. Her dedication to financial journalism has earned her multiple recognitions and invitations to high-level professional development programmes. She is an alumna of the International Visitors Leadership Programme (IVLP) in the United States and holds an Advanced Financial Journalism Certificate from the Press Association Training in London, UK. Her other notable achievements include completing the Lagos Business School CMC Programme, the Bloomberg Media Africa Initiative Programme, and a Master Class in Journalism at Rhodes University in South Africa.