The African Development Bank (AfDB) has announced that it has attracted an additional $300 million in co-financing from the Arab Bank for International Development (BADEA) for Phase 2 of the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) programme.

This development was revealed by Professor Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka, Senior Special Adviser on Industrialisation to the President of the AfDB, at the end of the two-day SAPZ-1 High-Level Implementation Acceleration Dialogue and States Steering/Technical Committee Workshop in Abuja.

The SAPZ programme has already seen significant investment in its first phase, with the AfDB contributing $220 million and raising a total of $540 million from partners including the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Africa-Go-Together Fund.

However, Prof Oyelaran-Oyeyinka noted that despite the goodwill and co-financing support, disbursement has been slow, with only 1.2% of funds disbursed in Nigeria over the past five years.

According to him, human barriers and negative interventions have hindered the project’s progress, emphasizing the need for swift responses to critical conditions to ensure the project’s success.

“So we have that leverage, we have that convening power globally and also among our regional member countries we call it RMCs and among our partners. So in the first phase of the Special Agro-industrial Processing Zone, the bank’s contribution was about $220 million, we raised $540 million, the rest came from Islamic Development Bank, IFAD and there’s also an organization called Africa-Go-Together Fund.

“So as you can see, we were able to raise considerable financing and as we speak here now, for the phase two, we have also attracted additional co-financing of $300 million from the Arab Bank for International Development (BADEA).

“So the goodwill is there, and the co-financing support is there, but people will not bring you financing when you have not disbursed the one they gave to you in the first place and this was the source of our own frustration about the fact that in Nigeria we have spent about five years, our disbursement raised about 1.2%, in other words, we are not able to disburse because people are not meeting the conditions in terms of speed of responding to the critical conditions.

“We haven’t been responding enough because sometimes those human barriers, in fact, what I find the most difficult is the human intervention, sometimes negative human interventions in the course of complex projects. I cited yesterday how just one individual held us up for almost nine months for no reason at all, this carried-me-along syndrome”, he said

Despite all the challenges, he stressed that if 80 per cent success is achieved, it would be a plus for the AfDB, disclosing that out of the eight states that are beneficiaries, at least three or four of them are playing by the rules or trying  hard to play by the rules.

“If all we get is four out of five, that’s 80 per cent. For me, that would be success at the end of the year. We also believe because we are resilient. If it hasn’t been resilience, we would have given up a long time ago,” he added.

Also speaking to journalists at the event, the National Programme Coordinator for the Nigeria Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zone Programme, (SAPZ), Dr. Kabir Yusuf, disclosed that the project is conceptualized to diversify the Nigerian economy through Agriculture.

Kabir noted that workshop aimed to highlight the potential of the SAPZ in reducing Nigeria’s dependence on agricultural imports, which will significantly impact the foreign exchange situation in the country.

The coordinator who said he was optimistic about the impact the initiative will have on the overall development of the country, insisted that “the SAPZ is a transformative project that aims to diversify Nigeria’s economy through agriculture, promoting it as a viable business rather than merely a way of life”.

He said, despite the challenges inherent in starting new projects, “We have adopted a Design-Build-Operate (DBO) model to expedite our processes in response to the food security emergency declared by the President.