Gabon government to send Gabonese farmers on training courses in Morocco, Malaysia among other countries as it tries to persuade young people to take up farming since the country import almost all of its food and is currently facing dwindling crude revenue reports Bloomberg.
“We need to foster the development of an agro-industry here,” Gagan Gupta, country head at the company’s Gabon unit, said in a phone interview. “It’s about creating human capital.”
At least 2,500 people will be able to observe cocoa farming in Ivory Coast, train as bulldozer operators in Morocco or learn modern farming techniques at a palm-oil plantation in Asia, Gupta said by phone from the capital, Libreville according to Bloomberg.
President Ali Bongo wants to boost agricultural output to as much as 20 percent of gross domestic product by 2020, from about 5 percent at present. Under the government’s agriculture program, which began in 2014 and is known as Graine, people who complete a training course or are seen as eligible to farm can obtain land titles in less than a year.
The government has also fast-tracked the process of issuing land titles to cooperatives and individuals to boost agriculture, Gupta said. About 4,000 people have registered for the program in the hope of obtaining land, he said.
Singapore-based, Olam International Ltd, has partnered with Gabon to develop 100,000 hectares (247,000 acres) of oil-palm plantations in the nation, which has a population of less than 2 million.
