Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, has urged African countries to undertake agroindustrial revolution if it must shake off the ugly tag of under-development and backwardness.
Ayade was speaking as the chief host of the 2019 Africa Industrialisation Day (AID) organised by the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) and the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment in Calabar.
He said while the need to industrialise Africa has become pertinent and urgent, the continent must make sure the right steps are taken if the objective must be achieved.
“Agroindustrial revolution is the first step to take. It is, indeed, only agroindustrial revolution that allows you to industrialise, revolutionise your economy and yet carry the people along, because the essence of industrialisation is to create social harmony.
“The problem with Africa is the extemporaneous excitement of attitude to catch up with the Western world. In the process, we miss the strategic steps that are required towards growth,” he said.
He said it was against that background his administration embarked on agroindustrial revolution through value-chain, addition to agricultural processes.
“Today, we have the garment factory employing over 3,000 people with women constituting 85 percent of that workforce. We have a philosophy of going from farm to fabric. So, our cotton farm in Yala Local Government Aarea in partnership with Arewa Textile is helping to create the raw materials that we require in other to have our knitting and fabrics that we can turn into garments. That is agroindustrial revolution.
“We have the Cross River State noodles factory, which depends mostly on rice, because the use of wheat has been found to have high level of gluten. Today, in Cross River, we have a feed mill and a factory that will be producing 24,000 frozen chicken per day. As such, we need a huge quantity of maize and soya beans for feed production.
“This will create an agricultural value chain that will create an enabling environment for you to cultivate new farm lands to support the cultivation of maize and soya beans, in the process, creating jobs and linking people to farm and linking the farms and produce to agriculture and linking them ultimately to the industries.
“That is the connectivity and that is why agroindustrial revolution is always the first,” he said.