Kwara governor’s wife calls for economic diversification through agribusiness  

By Zainab Iwayemi

Olufolake Abdulrazak, the first lady of Kwara State, has called for maximum attention to be paid to agribusiness as the state government invests heavily in the agriculture sector to encourage farming activities within the state.

The first lady, in a virtual webinar tagged, “Agribusiness: The Need for Patient Capital”, monitored by Business A.M. and hosted by the Ajike People Support Center, in conjunction with The Africa Farmers’ Story, held to celebrate the International Day of Industrialization for Agriculture, said agribusiness is rapidly growing as one of the key industries at both local and global level with increase global responsiveness in food security in the face of imminent population growth.”

Abdulrazaknoted that the government is investing hugely in agriculture to encourage farming activities in that regard, while commending her husband, Governor Abdulrazak for endearing youths into agribusiness and promoting activities of farmers within the corners of the state.

Boasting of the state resources, she noted that: “Apart from implanting policies that encourage farming, the Kwara State government is also making high yielding seeds and other farm implements available to farmers. In complementing this effort, the office and the Ajike People’s Support Centre, my initiative, have at different times supported farmers.

“We are very lucky that in Kwara we have high yield cocoa and we are also very pleased that we have a cocoa industry. We also have in Kwara State, a young, fine chocolate company. This would help to ensure that agribusiness is thriving in the economy by getting raw material from the state. This would also help diversification in chocolate business to encompass other spectrums of chocolates,” the Kwara first lady stated.

Meanwhile, the economic diversification into the business of agriculture will help to improve the general agricultural output in the state as well as meet the demand and supply gap which exists within the value chain of food production and supply across the country.