Farmers’ education is key to driving Africa’s food security – Olam

Olam, global agricultural commodity producers have said that farmers’ education is vital in driving Africa’s food security.

According to the organisation, Africa cannot achieve self-sufficiency in food production without engaging and building the capacity of its smallholder farmers.

This was the submission of Venkataramani Srivathsan, managing director and chief executive officer of Olam Africa, Middle East, and North America regions, who spoke during a panel discussion on a BBC agro webinar event tagged ‘Agriculture – Africa’s Future’, held recently.

According to Srivathsan, providing training and financing opportunities for the 80 million smallholder farmers across the continent would boost food security, food safety, and job creation in the agro value chain.

“The COVID-19 outbreak was a setback for the African continent. The global health crisis took its toll on the continent’s food supply value chain thereby disrupting vital agro activities which led to the escalated level of food insecurity,” he said in a statement.

He added that effective capacity-building efforts, access to revenue-boosting agro-technology, the assembly of robust irrigation infrastructure, and the implementation of an effective micro-financing framework were necessary to help African smallholder farmers scale, encourage massive youth participation in agriculture and drive food security on the continent.

“Olam works with 2.5 million smallholder farmers in Africa and is investing to assist them in creating wealth for their communities and respective economies at large. We invest in research to make high-yielding seed available to the farmers,” he said.

“We are also tapping our global expertise in the agro value-chain to help the farmers adopt modern agro practices while extending loans to them through our participation in various anchor borrowers and out-growers initiatives across the continent,” Srivathsan added.

Besides Venkataramani Srivathsan, other panellists who featured on the webinar were Damian Ihedioha, division manager -Agribusiness Development Division, African Development Bank (AfDB); Beauty Manake, assistant minister, Ministry of Agricultural Development & Food Security, Botswana; Kulani Machaba, regulatory affairs leader, Africa & Middle East, Corteva Agriscience and Amrote Abdella, regional director, Microsoft 4Afrika.