As part of measures to encourage the youth to venture into agribusiness, the Head of Agribusiness at Absa Bank Ghana, William Nettey, says multinational firms must partner with local financial institutions to support such persons.

According to him, this partnership will go a long way to establish firms within the agribusiness space, and also help in reducing unemployment in the country.

“We expect that the big multinationals will link up with financial institutions so that we will be able to reach more out-growers. We have talked about commercial farming, which is great for us. Once it’s commercial, it makes a lot of sense.”

“We think that one of the ways to get the multinationals or the bigger companies involved, is to link them up to financial institutions where we will be able to reach out to them. In terms of the youth, we at ABSA are working closely with some of these fintechs to be able to develop their products. Most of them are really young, so you need to nurture them by providing them with training, start-up products to be able to develop to a point where investments can be made.”

He further stated that Absa has been working with key actors in the agric space to provide support to small-holder farmers.

“Because it has been said that some of our smallholder farmers are not so organised, it becomes difficult to reach them. So we work with actors like Eden Tree and other processors who are in touch with these smallholder farmers, to provide some support to them so that they can come up with what these farmers need, and work with them to be able to supply equipment for them.”

Mr. William Nettey was speaking on the Citi Business Festival virtual forum on Citi TV o  Tuesday, June 15, 2021.

The forum, the third of its kind, was on the theme ‘Feeding Ghana with a sound import substitution strategy.

It had James Boateng – Founder Kwafre Farms (Former National Best Farmer), Catherine Krobo Edusei – Agribusiness Entrepreneur and CEO of Eden Tree while Kwesi Korboe – Agric Economist and MD of GIRSAL and Benjamin Gyan Kesse – Director of the Kosmos Innovation Center joined via the zoom answering all questions bordering on Ghana’s Agricultural Space.

The Citi Business Festival is sponsored by Absa Bank, Ghana, with support from IT Consortium and the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC).

It is also powered by Citi FM, Citi TV, and Ghana’s most comprehensive business news website, www.citibusinessnews.com.

Source: citifmonline.com