Agriculture investment opportunities in COMESA are big: Egypt’s minister

There are big investment opportunities in agriculture in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa’s (COMESA) countries, Agriculture Minister Abdel-Moneim el-Banna said Friday.

He gave examples of Uganda, Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Tanzania, which has 102 million feddans, of which only 14 percent is cultivated.

Further, these six African states have some 445 million feddans ready for cultivating four strategic crops including wheat, corn, rice and sugar cane, in addition to having a railway transport system and ports through which they can export agriculture products to Egypt, Banna said on the sidelines of the Africa 2017 Forum in Sharm El-Sheikh.

He said that the Egyptian government has a plan for agricultural development with Nile Basin countries and African states that includes the expansion in establishing joint farms, which Egypt can benefit from in the cultivation of some crops.

This in turn would lead to boosting trade of agricultural products between Egypt and these countries. It would also encourage Egypt’s investment in agriculture, which will help reduce the country’s gap of agricultural products through facilitating the imports of these products from African states, Banna said.

He added that Egypt’s food gap is increasing in light of the limited Egyptian water resources and that the country’s production of food products does not cover its consumption, which in turn prompts Egypt to import to cover this gap. Source: Egypt today