Category Archives: Agriculture

10 Points from AfDB 2022 in Accra

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group held its 2022 series of annual meetings in May in Accra, Ghana with the theme of achieving climate resilience and a just energy transition for Africa.

Highlights of the meetings:

  1. Food Security: Most countries in Africa are Agri-based. But going forward, they should engage in modern agriculture with technology, fertilizer & seed improvements, and not just produce, but also process and package high-value foods to quality standards that they can export. Agriculture can then bring transformation and jobs to rural areas.

Africa has 400 million hectares of savannah which, the President of the African Development Bank Group Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, said, is better than Brazil’s (which is a net exporter of maize, beef, and soya) – and that for Africa to be a major player of global food, must transform its Savannah.

In six years, the Bank’s Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program has provided 76 million farmers with improved agricultural technologies. In Sudan, the AfDB provided certified heat-tolerant wheat seeds that, when cultivated over 65,000 hectares, made the country self-sufficient. In Ethiopia, the country progressively increased its acreage cultivated with certified heat-tolerant seeds from 5,000 to 167,000 hectares in 2021. With the increased harvest, they expert to export 1.5 – 2 million tons to Kenya and Djibouti.

  1. Energy Transformation: Currently 85% of the bank’s energy investment are in renewable energy with plans to double funding to $25 billion by 2025. While the bank has a policy not to support any coal, as part of its climate change, they acknowledge that intermittent renewable energy sources cannot power Africa alone, and that Power must also be accessible, secure and affordable.
    • One solution for Africa is gas. Nigeria has $200 trillion worth to exploit, according to President Adesina who said that Europe, which gets 45% of its gas from Russia, should look to Africa. Other countries with gas potential are Ghana, Cote de Ivoire, Angola, and Morocco. The AfDB is assisting Mozambique with a $24 billion LNP project that may make the country the 3rd largest producer in the world.
    • Some of the renewable energy investments the bank has undertaken are the Quarzazate Solar in Morocco – the world’s largest concentrated solar farm, the 3,000 MW Benban energy in Egypt, the $20 billion Sahel 10,000MW, and the largest wind project in Africa at Lake Turkana in Kenya.
    • The bank is mobilizing $40 billion for South Africa to ease its transition from a reliance on 44,000 MW of coal toward renewable energy sources. Donors have committed $17 billion of grant financing, and concessions, that the bank will leverage to meet this gap without South Africa getting into debt. As the government plans to move to net-zero emissions, the AfDB has invested in solar (Xina and Redstone projects) and wind (Sere) and is also supporting a feed-in tariff for renewable energy.
  2. The ADF: The Bank’s African Development Fund (ADF) receives donations from regional members and has provided $45 billion to low-income countries. Nine of the ten countries that are most vulnerable to climate change are in Africa and 100% are ADF countries. As the ADF needs more resources, the Bank plans to tap the ADF’s accumulated equity of $25 billion to raise $33 billion from capital markets. This will make the future of the ADF more sustainable and member countries will enjoy lower borrowing costs.
  1. The Infrastructure Gap: Infrastructure’s share of the bank’s funding portfolio is high because infrastructure projects are capital intensive. One project showcased was the Pokuase road interchange that is part of the Accra Urban Transport Project and which now disperses traffic on four levels to help reduce transport congestion in Accra. It was funded with $84 million from the Bank and the Government of Ghana.

Also at the summit, Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan received the Africa Road Builders–Babacar Ndiaye prize for 2022. In her speech, she credited her predecessors, especially President John Pombe Magufuli who was a Roads and Public Works Minister in two governments before leading the country. The AfDB in 15 years had advanced $2.1 billion for 2,315 kilometres of road on the Tanzania mainland while Zanzibar has received $113 million for 139 kilometres of roads.

  1. Climate Change: One of the themes of the 2022 meetings was “achieving climate resilience”. Climate change is an existential threat with droughts, floods, and cyclones devastating Africa and causing losses of $7-15 billion a year. Even though the continent contributes just 4% of greenhouse gas emissions, it just gets 3% of climate-related financing. Developed nations had promised to fund Africa with $100 billion to adapt to climate change but this has not materialized and the Bank now plans to mobilize $25 billion for climate adaptation through a new fund.
  1. Creative Financing: During Covid, the bank launched a $3 billion social impact bond on global capital markets and the funds went to train 130,000 health workers, provide social protection for 30 million households, and business advisory for 300,000 SMEs. The Bank now plans to use its AAA-rated balance sheet to leverage $100 billion of Special Drawing Rights (SDR) from International Monetary Fund and grow that four times.
  1. Development Financing by the AfDB can be targeted at specific areas:

• Towards Food Security: In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, food prices have gone up 30-40%, oil is 60%, and fertilizer prices tripled. So the AfDB launched a $1.5 billion African Emergency Food Production Facility to enable countries to intensify agricultural productivity and ward off the looming hunger crisis.
• For agriculture, President Adesina said the bank will allocate $1 billion to fund special agri-processing zone in rural areas of Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ghana, CIV and Senegal.
• Towards transformational infrastructure projects; the bank continues to fund ports, highways, bridges and border-crossing stations.
• Towards Youth Funding: one mechanism to help youth stop fleeing Africa will be through a youth entrepreneurship investment bank that will invest in youth business in 13 countries. The Bank is working on a mechanism to be ready after June 2022.

  1. Looming Debt: Even as African countries recovered in 2021 from Covid shocks, they face elevated debt levels and limited financial capacity that constrained further growth.

The bank has a focus on debt management of countries to improve the quality, sustainability and transparency of the debt. They will work with the World Bank, IMF and G20 nations to deal with private debt and commercial debt that now account for 44% of Africa’s debt. The Bank helped Somalia build back its debt management capacity after decades of war and negotiate debt relief with an arrears clearance plan and it now plans to l work with partners to do the same for Zimbabwe and build it back to an economic breadbasket.

  1. Rain parade: The Economist magazine dive-bombed the meetings with an article about a missing evaluator at the Bank. Later in his speech at the end of the summit, President Adesina said that a two-year external review of the Bank showed that its governance was world-class where areas of improvement were pointed out, these will be done. The joint communique at the end of the meetings mentioned the AfDB would implement the recommendations of a governance committee.
  2. Accra Image: The host nation of Ghana, celebrated 50 years since the passing of Kwame Nkrumah its founding President. It is seen as the birthplace of Africa as, in 1957 Ghana was considered the first Sub-Saharan country to achieve independence and is now a showcase for AfDB -financed projects including roads, farms and airports.

See more about the last in-person annual meetings – the 2019 AM in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

Picture of President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania, speaking after receiving the Babacar Ndiaye prize for 2022. Courtesy of Edgar Batte. 

Next meetings: Following these first meetings since Covid, the next annual meeting will be at Sharm El Sheikh in Egypt from May 23-26, 2023. The new Chairman of the Board of Governors is Tarek Amer, the Governor of the Bank of Egypt. The First Vice-Chairperson will be a representative of Brazil and the second one will be from Uganda.

AfDB’s record capital call of $115 billion

The shareholders of the African Development Bank (AfDB) have approved an increase of its capital to support its future development finance and impact across the continent over the next decade.

Meeting in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, in October 2019, the shareholders, representing 80 countries, approved an increase in the AfDB’s authorised capital, from $93 billion to $208 billion. At the end of 2018, the Bank had assets of $47 billion and $58 million of net income.

The voting power of shareholders includes Nigeria (9.3%), Egypt (5.6%), South Africa (5%), Algeria (4.2%), Morocco (3.6%), Côte d’Ivoire (3.7%) and Kenya (1.4%). African nations have a total of 59% of the voting powers, while other nations, including the USA (6.6%), Japan (5.5%), Germany (4.1%) and Canada (3.8%), have total votes of 41%.

The path to the seventh capital increase began back in January 2018 and has gone through several steps including interactions and progress review updates with shareholders and partners that were summarized at the 2019 AfDB annual meetings in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea.

The last capital increase was in 2010. Some of the highlights of the funding during the sixth period include the establishment of agro-industrial zones across Ethiopia and arranging $1 billion in finance for South Africa’s Eskom to expand its generation and transmission capacity. There was also the Sene-Gambia bridge, which was the realization of a 40-year dream to connect two countries, the 895-kilometers Addis-Mombasa highway and the expansion of Namibia’s Walvis Bay port to become a regional logistics hub.

A bank study of the impact of its $1.4 billion investments in East Africa region, between 2013 and 2015, found that this had resulted in the addition of $1.2 billion to the economies of the different countries and created over 380,000 jobs

The new funding, which will be called up from shareholders between 2020 and 2025, is intended to finance the Bank’s High 5 priorities and maintain its AAA rating with the top rating agencies. Over the next decade, the AfDB plans to double the funding efforts towards energy and agriculture, with targets to allocate 25% and 20% respectively, to the two sectors by 2031.

The Bank has lined up a three-year pipeline of projects to lend to, including $15 billion in 2020 and $13.6 billion in 2021. Some of the planned projects are targeted at improving continental transport networks, supporting climate change initiatives, and increasing access to electricity and water. One of them is a “Desert-to-Power” initiative that aims to transform the climate-fragile Sahel region into the largest solar zone in the world that will generate 10-gigawatts and impact 250 million people.

Toxic Business: Banned in the European Union, poisoning Kenya

Agriculture is one of Kenya’s key income earners contributing 24% of GDP and employing 75% of the population either directly or indirectly. As a result, the demand for pesticides is high and increasing with the need to increase agricultural production to keep up with the population increase. Imported chemical pesticides in the market account for 87% and have more than doubled in four years from 6,400 tonnes to 15,600 tonnes in 2018, yet there are few safeguards to control application.

Every year fresh produce from Kenya is rejected by the European market when it is found to have harmful levels of chemical residue. When returned, it finds its way to local fresh produce markets and is consumed by unsuspecting Kenyans. The result is a huge healthcare burden on households as more people, especially children, fall ill.

A report by Kenya Plant Health Inspectorate Service (KEPHIS) showed that 46% of the fresh vegetables sold in Kenyan fresh produce markets have high levels of pesticides with harmful active ingredients, with Kale (94%) having the highest level of pesticides and herbicides that are harmful to human and animal health.

A small-scale farmer Joseph, who has adequate training in the handling of pesticides, prepares to spray his crops by mixing the chemical with water in a backpack sprayer pump, using his bare hands and no protective mask or clothing, he gives the pump a firm shake to mix the ingredients in it and then proceeds to splash water on the exterior of the sprayer pack to rinse off the chemical overspill with his hands. The small quarter-acre, gently sloping vegetable garden surrounds his family’s house, which further exposes his family to harmful chemicals. He is not aware of the danger of handling these pesticides, only focusing on their efficacy in pest control.

At the local roadside Market, Daniel Maingi of Kenya Food Rights Alliance purchases green capsicum and spinach to take for testing at the University of Nairobi’s Pharmacology & Toxicology Laboratory at the Department of Public Health, where Professor Mbaria confirms harmful levels of chemicals containing toxic active ingredients on the sample vegetables.

The “Pesticides In Kenya: Why our health, environment and food security is at stake” report by Route To Food Initiative (RTFI), makes a distinction between the toxicity of the active ingredient and the toxicity of the chemical product. In the European market, the manufacturer of a chemical product first registers the active ingredient, which is then tested and must be identified by name on the product label.

Of the “247 active ingredients registered in Kenya, 150 are approved in Europe, 11 are not listed in the European Database and 78 have been withdrawn from the European market or are heavily restricted in use due to potential chronic health effects, environmental persistence, and high toxicity to wildlife.”

In a case of double morality standards, these chemicals are available to Kenyan farmers threatening the health of both citizens and the environment by contaminating the soil and water. Most of these pesticides take years to degrade and therefore persist in the environment for many years and many are acutely toxic causing severe long-term toxic effects, disrupting the human endocrine system, and harming wildlife and other non-target organisms that are crucial to the ecology.

The Pesticide Control Products Board (PCPB) set up by the Government of Kenya under the Pest Control Products Act of 1982 regulates the importation, manufacture, distribution and exportation of pest control products. PCPB has registered 247 active ingredients in 699 horticultural chemical products, with more products registered than active ingredients as one active ingredient can be by several companies. Of these, a quarter are banned in Europe and they include big brand names such as Syngenta, Bayer and BASF.

In Kenya, chemical companies host robust carnival-like events where smallholder farmers are bussed in from across the country and paid a stipend to attend. Throughout the festival, no mention is made to farmers about safe handling or protective clothing when mixing the chemicals for application on the crops. The farmers appear to completely trust the chemical companies to have their best interests at heart and do not ask any questions. At these marketing events, several chemicals are presented as solving multiple problems and are touted as the best in the market.

Glyphosate-based agrichemicals have received enormous pushback globally for its carcinogenic properties. However, there are other harmful ingredients that should attract much more attention in use in Kenya, but banned in the European Union. Carcinogenic active ingredients include Chlorothalonil, Clodinafop, Oxyfluorfen and Pymetrozine. Mutagenic active ingredients include Cabendazim, Dichlorrvos and Trichlorfon. Endocrine disruptor pesticide active ingredients include Acephate, Carbofuran, Deltamethrin, Omethoate and Thiacloprid. Active ingredients that hamper development and are harmful to reproductive health include Abamectin, Carbendazim, Carbofuran, Gamma-cyhalothrin, Oxydemeton-methyla and Thiacloprid. Neurotoxic active ingredients include Abamectin, Acephate, Dichlorvos, Glufosinate-ammonium, Omethoate, Permethrin and Thiacloprid.

Before the advent of chemical herbicides, farmers would weed their farms by hand and using hand hoes, this has been increasingly replaced by pesticides even for smallholder farms under five acres. Mono-cropping or monoculture where one crop is planted year in and year out, depleting the soil of nutrients and necessitating the increased use of fertilizers to improve yields with each subsequent year, also encourages the spread of crop pests which require chemicals to treat. Another area that receives little focus is post-harvest storage pesticides. If fertilizers are subsidized, why not include hermetic storage technology (HST) storage bags that provide moisture and insect controls, without pesticides, in this policy?

If we continue to consume chemicals, consciously or subconsciously through the food we eat, the water we drink and the air we breathe, then the next generation we produce will be of a lesser quality than ourselves, as will subsequent generations.

A guest post by Velma Kiome 

10 Points from AfDB 2019 in Malabo

The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group held their 2019 series of annual meetings from 11 to 14 June in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea with the theme of “Regional Integration”

Highlights of the meetings:

1. Fast growth is not Enough: A key theme of the week was that the stellar growth levels in Africa (over 4%) were still not enough to create enough jobs and produce sufficient food on the continent.

2. High 5’s:  Regional Integration is one of the development priority themes (‘ High 5s’) that the Bank had adopted at its 2016 meetings in Lusaka, Zambia alongside (to) “Light up and power Africa”, “Feed Africa”, “Industrialise Africa”, and “Improve the quality of life of the people of Africa.”

3. It is Capital Raising time for the Bank and is organs. There are advanced talks towards a 7th general capital increase, the first since 2010, for the African Development Bank, which will be concluded in September.

A few months ago, Canada provided temporary callable capital of up to $1.1 billion to stabilize the AAA rating of the Bank.

There are also ongoing negotiations for a 15th replenishment of the African Development Fund.

4. Visa Index: The Bank’s Africa Visa Openness Index ranks how accessible African countries are to visitors from within the continent in terms of requiring travel visas and tracks developments by different countries to improve the ease of travel for fellow African citizens.

5. Low intra-Africa trade:  Ahead of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) which comes into force in July 2019, the potential economic benefits of full implementation were highlighted, with the greatest beneficiaries of the increased trade likely to be countries in the Central Africa region.

Africa has 54 countries; Alone they are not very competitive, but together, under the Continental Free Trade Agreement, they are a market of $3.4 trillion

 

Also see the regional economic outlook reports by the Bank.

6. Debt levels in Africa: There was some discussion about the levels and types of debt across Africa and their potential burden versus the growth and infrastructure needs of individual countries. Also the Bank affirmed its support to help countries negotiate better financing terms, get better deals for extractive resources, minimize currency risks, and to enable them to mobilize their own resources domestically.

7. Asia-models for Africa: At the AfDBAM2019, Korea and India showcased their partnerships with the Bank including on agricultural transformation, enhancing food security and scaling financing across Africa.

8. Different forms of development finance by the Bank: 

  • Toward Financial Inclusion

  • Integration of Africa

  • The Environment

  • Food Security

  • Disaster Relief

  • Clean Energy

  • They also have plans for an affirmative action finance facility for women in Africa (AFAWA).

9. Transformational Infrastructure Projects funded by the bank include ports, highways, bridges and border-crossing stations across different countries.

10. Malabo Image: Host nation, Equatorial Guinea, used the forum to shed an image about the country that is full of old stereotypes to one of economic diversification, transformation and infrastructure. President Obiang attended the opening of the AfDBAM2019 which were chaired by the country’s Minister of Finance, Cesar Abogo, who is just 39 years old.

(a) Parallel events during AfDBAM2019: 

  • Africa Investment Forum last year which at its inaugural AIF forum in 2018 in Johannesburg secured  $38 billion of investments for 40 projects across Africa.

  • African Banker Awards

(b) Next meeting: Following these first-ever meetings to take place in Central Africa, the next annual meetings of the bank will be in a year’s time in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire – the bank’s headquarter city, where they the election of the Bank President will be the main agenda item.

Flowers by the Lake: Karuturi and the Bankers

Kenya is known as one of the giants of the giants of the fresh flower world, producing roses, lilies and other carnations that are freighted around the world to be used as gifts, tokens of affection, and to spruce up weddings, offices and restaurants.

A large share of these flowers come from farms around Lake Naivasha, a tiny lake in the Rift Valley of Kenya about 90 kilometers Northwest of Nairobi.  Many of the farms are on Moi South Lake Road, which is also where most of the picturesque Naivasha tourist lodges are also located. The road is a bumpy, potholed road, one which seems illogical given the investments on each side of the road, that run into tens of millions of dollars of lodges interspersed with flower farms, that neighbour each other for almost ten kilometers. In between are small ramshackle town structures that are a common peri-urban feature across the country housing bars, chemists, mobile money agents and other shops. There are also schools named after flower companies and you may spot hundreds of school children playing football or lounging at break time as other kids walk towards their homes, along the road which has sparse traffic of flower company buses and land cruisers and minivans ferrying tourists to different lodges, with familiar names like Simba, Enashipai, Sopa, Pinkman, Crayfish and Crescent. There are also signs for land for sale, usually on the left side of the road, away from the prime lake shore and some with unfinished building structures, outcomes of a dream sold years ago of Naivasha as a place to buy a holiday home.

Then there appears a large group of greenhouses, on the right side of the road, the preferred side. But unlike other farms you have passed, you can see past the ever-present Naivasha thorn bushes and security fences, that the greenhouses plastic walls and roofs are torn, flapping in the wind.. Inside the compound looks overgrown, and devoid of busy activity at other flower farms.

This is Karuturi, a farm that has spawned a long-running case in the Kenya courts. It is not the longest, not by far.  If you spend time in Kenya’s courts you will discover there are cases, commercial and civil, that stretch as far back as ten, twenty, and even thirty years.

The case, Civil Suit No. 78 of 2014 of Surya Holdings, Rhea Holdings and Karuturi Limited, against CFC Stanbic Bank collectively known Karuturi case is a unique one. One that has roped in banks in Kenya and India, landowners, flower pickers, workers unions, schools, two receiver managers, audit firms, suppliers and government agencies.

 A summary of the case events:
  • December 2012: Stanbic advances facilities to Karuturi; with the main loan to be repaid over five years. The facilities are secured by guarantees from directors of Karuturi as well as Rhea Holdings and Surya Holdings, related companies which are the registered owners of the land parcels the farm was situated on, The first repayment was made in January 2013 but then none was made for the next three months in succession.
  • January 2014: Stanbic obtained an advisory opinion which showed that the Karuturi farm was insolvent, its financial accounts were questionable for 2012 and it appeared the directors of Karuturi had abandoned the farm. They advised that putting the farm under receivership was the only way to stop further degradation of the assets. as the farm had stopped sales and production of flowers at Naivasha in August 2013.
  • February 2014: Stanbic places Karuturi in receivership and appoints Kieran Day and Ian Small as Receivers and Managers.
  • February 2014: Receivers advised the bank to move to dispose of the farm as soon as possible and to preserve assets by continue trading.
  • March 2014: Karuturi sues to challenge the appointment of receivers and stop the sale of the charged properties.
  • June 2014: Court rules that the appointment of receiver managers was proper. It also restrains the receivers from selling the charged properties (Rhea’s LR 10854/60 and Surya’s LR’s 12248/20, 12248/21, 12248/38, 25261 and 25262)
  • Karuturi was reported to have been relocating to Ethiopia in March 2014  in what was seen to signal a loss for Kenya as a preferred flower growing powerhouse.
  • October 2014: The Receivers create a company called Twiga BV to facilitate the sale of Karuturi flowers to the Netherlands and to receive revenue in order to pay expenses, staff and suppliers of the business. This came after Karuturi BV had been declared insolvent.
  • October 2015: One of the Receiver Managers is relocating from Kenya and the firm resigns. The bank appoints Muniu Thoithi and Kuria Muchiri of PWC as the new receiver-managers. Twiga was transferred to the new receivers at the end of 2015.
  • March 2016: In a hearing of a case filed to wind up Karuturi, and with lawyers for Polythene Industries, Agility, Ivaco, Inter Label, ICICI and Stanbic, the lawyers for Karuturi side with the winding up clause and allowed this process to proceed.
  • October 2016: A High Court judge finds that Karuturi had admitted (in March 2016) that they owed the bank $4M and Kshs 2.7 million before the receivership and that Surya and Rhea had provided securities to secure this debt. The court also directs that an independent forensic audit be done on business and operational transactions during the receivership period and look at items such as the expenses paid by the bank, repayments by Karuturi to the bank, balances outstanding, exports and production, payments to workers, tax payments, status of assets bought or sold during the receivership inventories, and compare the performance of the company between 2007-2012 to the receivership period.
  • November 2016: The suit parties settle on Deloitte to do the audit.
  • August 2017: Karuturi applies to the court seeking to pay $3.8M and Kshs 2.7 million within sixty days and have the bank release the land titles of Surya and Rhea.
  • October 2017: The audit report to the court reveals that, in addition to the debt owed before the receivership of $6.2M, another $9.4M had been spent during the receivership. The audit showed that 403 million good quality roses had been harvested (between February 2014 and May 2016), 2% of which could not be accounted for. Altogether in 2015 and 2016 Twiga received $23.6 million and paid $23.5 million for vendor expenses and administrative functions. Also, the assets of the company were intact, contrary to a Karuturi claim that the receiver managers had run down the assets of the company and it dismissed many of the accusations of Karuturi including that on transfer pricing and found that the receivers had not engaged in misconduct. The audit also found that the last known date of production at the farm was early in May 2016 and that the farm was descending into disrepair as costs continued to be incurred in preserving it.
  • October 2017: ICICI Bank of India wins a separate demand for $40 million from Karuturi.
  • January 2018: Courts rule that the receivership was proper and that Karuturi directors should pay the pre-receivership debt of $4M and Kshs 2.7 million, with interest, within 60 days. Also that, within 90 days, they are to pay $6.3M owed to creditors during the receivership and $6.7M advanced by the bank during the receivership period up to December 2016 and another $0.97M of receivership expenses incurred the following year to July 2017.
  • March 2018: Reports that an American company, Phoenix Group, has invested an undisclosed sum, said to be $2 billion, in Karuturi Global to help it pay its debts and revive its Kenya operations.

  • May 2018: The Receiver Manager of Karuturi (in liquidation) puts the movable assets of the company on sale. These include 1,400 steel greenhouses, vehicles, refrigeration and irrigation equipment. The land they occupy at Moi South Rd, Lake Naivasha is not part of the transaction.
  • Later in the month, Karuturi appealed against the court judgment and sought to terminate the receivership and also stop the sale of assets.

  • September 2018: The case is due for hearing this month. In the meantime, Kenya has enacted new company laws and insolvency laws. The main difference is that whereas before a receiver manager would act in the interest of the bank, they are now mandated to act on behalf of the bank and all creditors of the company.