- Economists Advise FG on Unemployment
The Nigerian Economic Society has called on the Federal Government to optimise the agriculture value chain in order to reduce the level of unemployment in the country.
The President, NES, Prof Tamunopriye Agiobenebo, said this during an interview with journalists in Abuja.
He said that the inability of the county to add value to its agricultural produce was a major cause for concern, noting that the society would be holding a conference on solutions to the challenges facing the sector.
Agiobenebo said the conference with the theme “Optimising value chain in the agricultural sector in Nigeria” would be held in partnership with the African Development Bank.
He said that if the government could harness the potential of the agricultural sector, the huge level of poverty and unemployment in the country would be reduced.
He said, “This conference is special in a number of ways because the theme is of interest not only to Nigeria but the entire continent.
“We are talking about the value chain in the agric sector because the reality is that the number of demand is growing daily due to demand for food. We are producing food in Nigeria but we are not making the best use of the resources we are deploying to agriculture sector.
“We need to get more value from the resources we are deploying to the agricultural sector. We can get more output if we optimise the value chain. Take cocoa for instance, we are number six in the production of cocoa in the world and produce 468,000 tonnes per annum but we end up importing chocolate.
“We need to have factories that will produce chocolate bars from cocoa and then get more value from that. That is an opportunity to create new jobs, new values. If we have industries, we won’t be talking about 20 million unemployed people.”
He said the conference would enable NES, the African Development Bank and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector to discuss how government policies affect the agric sector.
Other issues to be examined at the conference, according to him, are how the funding system and cost of funding affect the value chain optimisation in the agric sector as well as how governance structure and linkage affect value chain optimisation.
