‘AGRI-BUSINESS WILL NOT GROW WITHOUT INFRASTRUCTURE’

Agriculture on its own cannot be self-sustaining if there are no infrastructure to support the sector Country Managing Director of Accenture Nigeria Niyi Yusuf has said.

He said this at the just concluded Nigeria Economic Summit held in Abuja recently, a statement from the company said.
According to Yusuf, agro business cannot thrive if there are no infrastructures to “move the goods from farm to the city” and if there is no technology to provide information on the price, supply and demand.
He also said “if there are no banks to provides fund and credit facilities, if we don’t have insurance to provide the covers for the risk, the media to publicized role models and who have done successfully and if we don’t have educational system that aligned with its curriculum to aid the agribusiness,”  the sector will remain moribund.
The Accenture boss advised that all the items be addressed “holistically to connect the dots” with the involvement of the private sectors.

“If we can get the agribusiness liberalized, what we witnessed in the telecom sector will be small to what we will get compare to agribusiness,” he emphasized.
Yusuf said his company is partnering with the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, to explore opportunities in agric sector.
“We are also working closely with Ministry of Technology, we recently designed a project called Techlaunchpad, where we have young technology entrepreneur to design a solution useful to a particular sectors,” he said.