Nigeria on Monday urged Australian investors to key into the country’s potentialities in the agriculture and mining sectors in view of renewed efforts to develop those areas.
Foreign Affairs Minister Olugbenga Ashiru made the call when he received a special envoy of the Australian Prime Minister, Mrs Joanna Hewitt, in his office in Abuja.
He said Nigeria was focusing on the private sector as the driver of both sectors.
“Our agriculture agenda focus on having a private sector led boards, the focus is to make agriculture a private sector business with no government interference; already we have a lot of investors operating large scale farming in Nigeria.’’
As a government, we are concerned about food security, that is why we are making agriculture more mechanised and productive,” Ashiru said.
He acknowledged Australia’s expertise in those fields, saying that though both countries were far apart, the private sector could bridge the gap between them.
In her comments, Hewitt said Australia was concentrating on areas where its economic profile matches Africa’s potentialities and priorities, especially in agriculture and mining.
The envoy said Australia was willing to share its expertise and experience in research and technology to boost agriculture production in Nigeria and expressed the hope that more Australian investors would tap into the potentialities offered by Nigeria.
“We have an annual mining conference in Perth, one of our big mining cities, to encourage them to take advantages of opportunities in Africa’’.
Nigeria and Australia established a Business and Investment Forum in 2011 to among others promote trade between both nations.
