FCTA Set To Establish SAPZ At the cost of 5bn
The Federal Capital Territory Administration has provided N5 billion in the 2021 budget as counterpart fund for the immediate take-off of the Special Agro-industrial Processing Zone (SAPZ) in livestock production.
The Chairman Project Implementation Committee, Prof. Muhammad Usman disclosed this at a stakeholder engagement of AfDB/IFAD-SAPZ appraisal mission to FCT.
He also revealed that the FCTA had developed a strategic implementation plan for the next three years of the administration.
He described the project as a game changer in project development in the FCT, noting that the SAPZ when fully established would modernise livestock productivity for national food nutrition security by making available quality and price competitive beef/dairy products for local and export markets. He stressed that the project would resettle pastoralists, decongest the FCT of roaming cattle and mitigate farmer/herder conflicts.
According to him, the SAPZ will be complemented with the production in the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP) of the federal government while incentivising as many multi-national corporations with interest in livestock and dairy production.
“Consequently, we have constituted a multi-sectoral, inter-agency, and multi-disciplinary SAPZ project development team for FCTA that has worked through the COVID-19 lockdown period, to prepare draft project implementation checklists, design layouts, and infrastructure provision cost estimates,” Usman said.
In her presentation, Monde Nyambe, the task team Lead of Africa Development Bank (AfDB), said the establishment of SAPZ was one of the plans by the bank to achieve five cardinal objectives to integrate Africa and improve quality of life of Africans by using the small holder farmers.