The African Development Bank (AfDB) says it is designing youth entrepreneurship investment banks in Nigeria and 12 other African countries to create wealth.

“We are designing renewed financial institutions that will invest into the business of the youths, and Ghana is one of the benefitting countries.

“We have 13 countries, and we expect to finish that design by the end of June. It will create youths based wealth for the continent,” said Akinwumi Adesina, the president of the AfDB Group. 

He listed some other countries to benefit, including Zambia, Cote d’Ivoire, Mauritius, and Mozambique.

Mr Adesina spoke said at a news conference to conclude the bank’s 2022 Annual Meetings in Accra, Ghana.

On post-harvest losses, Mr Adesina said the bank had invested $1 billion in special agro-industrial processing zones to curb food losses.

“These are the new investments the bank is making to be close to the areas that the farmers are producing enabled with water, infrastructure, and logistics so that the food and agriculture processing companies can be located close to the zones.

“The processing companies in most countries are not located in the rural areas because there are no infrastructures in the rural areas.

“What we are trying to do with the processing zones is to reduce the cost of doing business for the food and agriculture companies so that they can offtake from the farmers and process them there,” he said.

The AFDB president bemoaned that Africa loses much food, adding that the consequences were complaints about carbon emissions, production without impact and hikes in food prices.

“Post-harvest losses is what I can describe as pouring water into a bucket that has holes, you have to stop the leakage but in developed countries, post-harvest losses is as a result of too much food, you can’t eat it, you throw it away but in Africa, it is not like that,” he said.

Egypt will host the next Annual Meetings of the Bank.

Tarel Amer, the governor of the Central Bank of the Arab Republic of Egypt, was appointed the new chairperson of the AfDB Board of Governors. 

(NAN)