The African Development Bank, AfDB, is to invest $563 million in rural infrastructure in Nigeria in 2022.
The investment will be in the areas of rural roads, transport infrastructure, and water sanitation, all aimed at enhancing agricultural productivity in Nigeria.
Akinwumi Adesina, president of the AfDB, made the revelation in Kano State on Saturday when he paid a condolence visit to Aliko Dangote over the death of his brother, Sani.
$110 million worth of the proposed fund will be channeled to Kano State.
Governor Ganduje’s media aide, Abba Anwar, quoted Mr Adesina of AfDB as saying: “We are using $110m in Kano for our programme on Special Agricultural Industrial Processing Zone. We are in all, having about $563m that will be dedicated to that project in various states of Nigeria.
“With this $110m that will be used for Kano State, just imagine what we could do. Investing in rural roads, investing in transport infrastructure, investing in water and sanitation and we also invest in agricultural productivity to raise production of food.
“We are processing, adding value and lots of hundreds of thousands of jobs because of that,” Mr Adesina said.
“With this programme of hundreds of US dollars, we will help develop consolidated infrastructure in rural areas. That will allow private sector food and agribusiness companies to reduce the amount of losses they have, create a more competitive value chain, transform the rural areas from the zones of misery to the zone of economic prosperity and increase the amount of resources the state has,” he said.
