Agriculture Summit Africa 2020: Sterling Bank names Mastercard, AfDB, other as headline sponsors
Sterling Bank Plc has announced Mastercard Foundation, Africa Development Bank (AfDB) and IDH – the sustainable trade initiative as headline sponsors for its 2020 Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA).
The commercial bank in a statement obtained by LagosBusinessNews says this year edition of the Summit will hold from September 23rd to 24th, 2020, with the theme, “Fast Forward Agriculture: Exploiting The Next Revolution.”
The bank, also, named Flour Mills Nigeria PLC., NIRSAL and Nourishing Africa as partners confirmed to be supporting this year’s Agriculture Summit.
According to Sterling Bank, the emergence of Mastercard Foundation and IDH as the headline sponsors of this year’s is indicative of significant strides in providing access to capital for women, small and medium scale enterprises as well as smallholder farmers in the country as enunciated in last year’s post-summit communique.
“Both organizations are strong advocates for the professionalization of the agricultural sector and the diversification of rural economies through improved access to a range of appropriate and sustainable financial and technical services.
“More than 2,500 delegates, financiers, entrepreneurs, government functionaries and agribusiness practitioners drawn from across the African continent, Asia, Europe and North America participated at the 2019 edition of the Summit”, the bank stated.
Commenting on this development, Yemi Odubiyi, Executive Director, Corporate and Investment Banking, Sterling Bank, said that this year’s edition would be a hybrid event – online and physical – due to the prevailing COVID-19 pandemic and the need to adhere to health management protocols laid down by authorities.
Odubiyi said the event was part of the bank’s commitment to the critical sectors of the Nigerian economy under its well-thought-out and impact-based HEART initiative. Agriculture is one of the five sectors the bank is concentrating investment in. The other sectors are Health, Education, Renewable Energy and Transportation.
The Executive Director added that the physical studios will be stationed in Abuja and Lagos for selected persons – speakers and panellists – noting that participants are required to register online via the summit’s official website:https://agricsummit.org/.
Also speaking, Bukola Awosanya, Group Head, Agric and Solid Mineral Finance for the bank, explained that aside financing opportunities for stakeholders, the bank would also use the summit to facilitate conversations around key areas in the sector.
“The ongoing global pandemic has caused job losses across various sectors of the Nigerian economy – agribusiness inclusive. With these jobs, losses have come to a drop in overall productivity and capacity for effective demand.” She also noted that “the control measures put in place to curb the spread of the virus in the country, such as restricted movement across key states and border closures have also contributed to slow growth in the agribusiness sector by resulting in inaccessibility of inputs and raw materials key for production”, she observed.
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