Press Hour of July 2, 2023
Transcript
00:00:00 Ladies and gentlemen, it's with renewed pleasure that we welcome you to press our set today.
00:00:29 The soil has never betrayed anyone.
00:00:32 Do not be afraid to take the plunge and become the agricultural engineers that Cameroon needs.
00:00:40 This is an excerpt from President Paul Beah's speech to Cameroonians on the Youth Day 2016
00:00:49 and that was on the 10th of February 2016 on the occasion of the Youth Day on February
00:00:56 11 the next day.
00:00:58 This is not a rhetoric.
00:01:00 It is not a bluff.
00:01:02 It is the reality.
00:01:04 The soil never fails.
00:01:07 Agriculture is that pillar which is keeping Cameroon and its neighbors walking.
00:01:12 But this is not enough.
00:01:14 At a time competition on the world production platform has room only for the toughest.
00:01:22 And it is transformation of agriculture that will be our focus today to see how Cameroon
00:01:29 can match up to the import substitution demands of the world market.
00:01:37 Transformational agriculture can Cameroon do better.
00:01:40 That's what we're going to be looking at today on Press Hour.
00:01:43 Dr. Tata Emmanuel Fung is an expert in machine building and agricultural value chain engineering.
00:01:52 We are glad to have you on Press Hour set today, doctor.
00:01:55 Thank you very much.
00:01:56 It's always a pleasure being on CRTV.
00:01:58 Yes, the pleasure is ours that you came.
00:02:01 We have just next to you, Promes Akante who is a journalist.
00:02:05 She's always here on Press Hour and her contributions, we have been told, they are incisive and we
00:02:12 expect just that today.
00:02:13 Promes, welcome.
00:02:14 Thank you very much, Kilian.
00:02:16 And greetings to the co-panelists, to all the men on the platform and hopefully to those
00:02:22 who are back home, we hope to serve you the way you expect and to give you nothing but
00:02:28 the right ideas.
00:02:30 The right ideas, that's what we expect from you and that's what our viewers expect from
00:02:34 us.
00:02:35 Dr. Tumenta Kennedy, he has so many portfolios but I usually just want to call him each time
00:02:43 I invite him on the expertise he has to give us and today he is an economist.
00:02:50 We're talking about agriculture and transformation.
00:02:53 You're welcome to Press Hour today.
00:02:55 Thank you, Kilian.
00:02:56 It's always a pleasure to be with you.
00:02:58 The pleasure always shared.
00:03:01 Atta Aminde, bless Attabon, is a freelance reporter.
00:03:08 He is an editor.
00:03:10 Sometimes he wants me just to present him as such but he is a reporter on financial
00:03:17 issues.
00:03:18 Yes, we are happy each time we invite you here, you answer yes.
00:03:22 Thank you for coming today, bless.
00:03:24 Thank you very much, Kilian.
00:03:25 I'm happy to be on set especially to discuss on this sector where there are potentials
00:03:30 to reduce the country's reliance on oil revenue.
00:03:32 Yes, and we're not going to waste any time.
00:03:35 We're going to call on Yoti Kalelisongwe to read the newspapers for us on Press Hour
00:03:42 in our slot press review.
00:03:45 Yoti.
00:03:46 Let's take a look at this week's tabloids in retrospect.
00:03:56 The Guardian Post captures Chinese investors unveiling multi-billion projects to boost
00:04:01 infrastructure development in Cameroon.
00:04:04 Besides the Post discloses the government and UN systems are scrutinizing ways of speeding.
00:04:10 Eco Outlook further reveals that Cameroon is working to reinforce public-private partnerships
00:04:15 to sustain growth.
00:04:17 Meantime, the CDC board chair is hopeful on the Post that short cycle crops will turn
00:04:23 the corporation around.
00:04:25 Just about the same time, the Horizon announces that Cameroon and Ghana have joined the fine
00:04:29 cocoa producers list.
00:04:31 Eco Outlook on its part focuses on the government going tough on illegal wood trade, whilst
00:04:37 Cameroon Tribune highlights that the National Anti-Corruption Commission is combating ills
00:04:43 at the grassroots and in addition, spotlights the contribution of mother thongs in the fight
00:04:48 against corruption.
00:04:50 The paper equally states that the communication code is envisaged to fight against hate speech
00:04:55 in the country.
00:04:56 This, the Guardian Post enunciates was at a seminar on hate speech and the Horizon indicates
00:05:03 that the NCC is brainstorming on how to eradicate hate speech in the Cameroon media.
00:05:09 In the same vein, the Prime Minister encourages senators on Cameroon Tribune, ensuring a return
00:05:14 to peace in the Northwest and Southwest regions.
00:05:18 The print media came back on the Paris summit with President Bia in attendance.
00:05:23 A statesman, the national coordinator of the DDLC's 100 ex-combatants, heeded by dropping
00:05:29 their arms.
00:05:30 "There was also a controversy over abandoned imported fish at the Douala port with the
00:05:36 container terminal management denying responsibility," states the Guardian Post.
00:05:41 A story the Herald Tribune captions, "Konjaukam's abandoned imported fish wahala," opining that
00:05:48 the terminal management has cleared the air.
00:05:51 This week as well, readers were informed that by raising non-refundable quotient fee for
00:05:56 SDF national chairmanship as parents from 50,000 CFE francs to 7 million, the SDF National
00:06:03 Executive Committee sets a tough condition to get Frundi's successor.
00:06:08 The Post is more concerned about the cracks on dissident SDF G27+ walls, pondering on
00:06:13 how sick Hon.
00:06:15 Awudu Mbaya's name got on the list.
00:06:17 Nonetheless, Elections Cameroon tells the Herald Tribune that there has been a 225,000
00:06:23 increase of potential voters.
00:06:26 Other stories like the basic education minister rubbishing Hon.
00:06:29 Ninchi's claims on the failure of the one-book policy, the court case to dismantle the Jicam
00:06:35 Icam merger, and the prescription for the promotion of peace nationwide during the Feast
00:06:40 of Tabaski made news, including a series of deaths that hit the print media and airwaves.
00:06:57 Did you know that in some parts of Cameroon, some families can go for days and maybe for
00:07:03 weeks without going to the market?
00:07:05 The question is, how do we ensure that the economy is not being destroyed by the government?
00:07:12 Agriculture plays a vital role in the development of our economy.
00:07:38 Approximately 89 to 90 percent of most of the activities in our economy take place in
00:07:48 the informal sector, and the majority of the activities are carried out within the agricultural
00:07:54 sector.
00:07:55 Food security has never been a great problem for us because subsistence farming is being
00:08:01 pushed.
00:08:02 We have seen the development in the past years of cash crop products, and we have seen how
00:08:10 the government of this country struggles in the multiple years with the green revolution,
00:08:15 second generation agriculture, and so on and so forth, to make sure that we can bring the
00:08:21 agricultural productivity to a second level.
00:08:24 But to understand the place that agriculture plays, you will look at the import substitution
00:08:29 approach, in which case we import a considerable amount of our products, most especially wheat,
00:08:38 which is almost 95 percent of which have been imported.
00:08:44 We find the importation of rice, agricultural by-products, we also have meat that has been
00:08:51 imported.
00:08:52 So we are doing great, but we are not where we are supposed to be.
00:08:57 If you look at countries like Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, Kenya, South Africa, of course,
00:09:05 they are doing a lot, and the considerable amount of investment within the agricultural
00:09:09 sector is very important.
00:09:11 So our economy is capable of meeting our subsistence needs, but we will not be able to meet the
00:09:19 demands, most especially when we have the African continental free trade at our door,
00:09:24 where the crisis of the Russo-Ukrainian crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, and some climate change
00:09:35 coming in, and bringing instability in our production processes.
00:09:41 Climate change affecting road distributions, the less adaptation of technologies within
00:09:48 the productions, and sometimes poor market linkages, they are all bringing a lot of impediments
00:09:58 in the achievement of our agricultural desire.
00:10:00 On the other hand, we see challenges within original value chain development, the lack
00:10:09 of inadequate training of farmers, and we think that if we are capable of addressing
00:10:18 some of these issues, Cameroon will gain its strategic position within the sub-region as
00:10:24 well as within Africa.
00:10:25 Yes, and there is one word you underlined when you were talking about agriculture, subsistence.
00:10:32 And this subsistence is challenged by the day now with the factors that you have enumerated.
00:10:39 We are going to move over to Dr. Teta Emanuelefon, who has new concepts, but we are not going
00:10:46 into the concepts you have to make sure that agriculture does not exist, it doesn't continue
00:10:53 to exist in the rudimentary, what you call subsistence level, that we get it into the
00:10:59 transformational level.
00:11:00 But tell us exactly what's the problem with transformation.
00:11:05 The first thing we want to know from you.
00:11:08 I would like you to make allusion to the rice, to the wheat that Dr. Tumente was talking
00:11:13 about.
00:11:14 We produce those things now, wheat in Cameroon already, but the rice that we import he is
00:11:19 talking about is junk rice, whereas we have potential for better.
00:11:25 Yeah, thank you very much.
00:11:28 In my first talking, I didn't greet the other panelists, so let me take this opportunity
00:11:35 to once again, to greet all of you.
00:11:38 Thank you very much.
00:11:39 So talking about mechanization and industrialization of agriculture in Cameroon with particular
00:11:46 focus on wheat and rice, there is a lot of challenges that Cameroonians are still facing,
00:11:57 but these challenges I think are already having their solutions, because you see we have a
00:12:02 lot of small institutions that have the possibility to transform these products to finished products.
00:12:13 A lot of groups are coming together these days to cultivate wheat.
00:12:17 There is an ongoing project in Ndonga Mantum, which is currently a group of farmers currently
00:12:24 producing wheat.
00:12:25 There is one in Oku that is also producing wheat.
00:12:32 So these are pilot initiatives which we are following up very closely, because the transformation
00:12:38 technologies to wheat flour itself, because we must get to realize that when we talk about
00:12:44 cultivation of wheat, that is not a finished product that we are importing.
00:12:48 Cameroon is importing wheat flour.
00:12:50 Cameroon is not, we are not cultivating wheat flour, but we are cultivating wheat.
00:12:54 So it will take some technology to be able to transform the wheat grains that we are
00:13:00 producing into wheat flour.
00:13:02 We will also have to choose which of the wheat flours do we want.
00:13:06 Do we want the bleached and enriched wheat flour or do we want the brown wheat flour.
00:13:11 So there are a couple of things that we have to take into context.
00:13:14 There is one thing that I want to tell Cameroonians today, I am very sure a huge chunk of the
00:13:19 Cameroonian population don't know, is that most of the rice that we are eating in Cameroon,
00:13:23 is not actually, most of it has not been to the farm.
00:13:25 I am talking about those, especially those that have been imported.
00:13:29 Because there are machines that can be used to produce rice from cassava chips.
00:13:34 You know we can use genetic modification to produce huge cassava tubers and transform
00:13:42 this into rice.
00:13:44 So it wouldn't, I mean it is not rocket science.
00:13:47 We see a lot of foreigners cultivating rice in Cameroon and exporting them to their countries.
00:13:52 And at the same time those same people are selling rice to Cameroon.
00:13:56 So it should be very logical for us to see there is something wrong with the rice that
00:14:00 we are importing from those countries.
00:14:02 So with respect to local transformation, the industry is taking...
00:14:09 And for us, before we go to transformation, for us not to import the doubtful rice, quality
00:14:14 rice that you were talking about, we have to step up our production scale.
00:14:19 Yes, we need investment in cultivation.
00:14:24 We need to create the value chain.
00:14:28 One of the huge challenges we are facing is that we have not identified all these value
00:14:33 chains that we are having, value chains we are having in agriculture and established
00:14:36 these value chains so that we do not put a lot of burden on the farmers, those who are
00:14:41 doing the cultivation.
00:14:42 They should be specialized.
00:14:43 They shouldn't do cultivation, at the same time do marketing, at the same time do transformation.
00:14:48 We should have them focus on doing cultivation and supplying to those at the middle stage
00:14:54 who would now do the transformation to the rice which can be marketed in our supermarkets
00:15:01 in Cameroon.
00:15:02 Yes, promise.
00:15:03 Yes, I was listening to Dr. Emmanuel with a lot of attention because he is highlighting
00:15:10 the points which touch where people don't want to be touched.
00:15:15 Because agricultural transformation is not just about saying it in words.
00:15:19 It's more than changes in farming practices.
00:15:23 It is about catalyzing transformation of a country's rural economy because that is where
00:15:28 it starts, at the rural base.
00:15:30 These are the people who are in the farms, the ones working.
00:15:33 So we have to begin by catalyzing that transformation at the rural base, the economy.
00:15:37 As such we have more than just agricultural trade and subsidy in place.
00:15:41 It is about going to a youth garden and giving them cutlass fish, horse and machetes and
00:15:46 say you are encouraging them into farming.
00:15:49 That's not what we are talking about because how much of clearing can they possibly do
00:15:54 with their machetes, with their horse, with their, I don't know, wheat barrels.
00:15:58 We are not saying that those are not important but if we are talking about transformational
00:16:02 agriculture like...
00:16:03 So, large scale production.
00:16:04 We need to talk about that before we go to transformation.
00:16:05 If we want to large scale, how much of it can be done using the machetes, how much of
00:16:11 it can be done using the wool?
00:16:12 Of course, we can always talk about that.
00:16:13 We need machines.
00:16:14 So let's talk about the trade, the subsidies in place.
00:16:18 It's true that we have machines that are being built in Cameroon now because at every level
00:16:23 we have more small businesses that can even crack a goose and make it at large scale production
00:16:27 but how much subsidies do they receive from wool and how much innovation is being promoted
00:16:34 in the country?
00:16:35 They are promoting the way they organise scientific research days, innovation days in the country.
00:16:41 After that, what next?
00:16:42 We have covered these events for the past few years and we have seen many wonderfully
00:16:47 talented youth come up with machines to revolutionise our country's agricultural sector but after
00:16:53 the innovation days at the Congress or wherever it was, what happens next?
00:16:58 That is the question we cannot answer.
00:16:59 That is the question that we need to answer.
00:17:02 Yes, we have not answered that question yet.
00:17:04 That we are going to answer.
00:17:05 You want to attempt an answer?
00:17:06 I was just wondering if you are going to answer.
00:17:08 No, we actually need to take it from where you are saying that after those exhibitions,
00:17:15 those people who exhibit those machines and their local entrepreneurs who have that talent
00:17:21 to invent, they should actually be taken to the next stage.
00:17:26 Blaise, I want to have your own contribution on this first stage of agriculture as the
00:17:33 mainstay of Cameroon will subsist from that and again we have to look forward to getting
00:17:42 it to the second generation, whatever you call it, transformation or whatever.
00:17:47 At the level of subsistence agriculture, I think we will be successful enough.
00:17:52 We want to look at cash flow productions and other food productions that can be exported.
00:18:00 We realize that we have actually fought that and one of the major reasons is because youth
00:18:05 are not involved in this sector of the economy.
00:18:10 And the principal reason, in the course of my reporting over the years which I have identified,
00:18:14 is that they have problems with access to land because you cannot cultivate in space.
00:18:18 You have access to land, they need to be land informed so that more youth can have access
00:18:24 to land where they can cultivate.
00:18:26 And in cases where we have to use technology like maybe greenhouse farming where you don't
00:18:31 need so much space and all of that, you also need capital.
00:18:34 And when you look at our system, we realize that youth have more difficulties in accessing
00:18:39 capital for agriculture.
00:18:41 You want to cite maybe the smaller, medium-sized enterprises promotion bank, the SMA bank,
00:18:46 but you realize that when youth go to these banks, most of their policies are just akin
00:18:51 to traditional banks, commercial banks where you still need collateral which youth don't
00:18:55 have to have this capital to put into agriculture.
00:19:00 So I think we need to really go back to the drawing board and check certain things like
00:19:06 land reforms where youth can actually have access to land, which is the basis to study
00:19:10 agricultural production and capital.
00:19:12 These are the two key things which I think need to be worked on for more youth to get
00:19:17 into agriculture.
00:19:18 Yes, Dr. Tuminta, it's easy to react to that in one minute and I'm going to give you what
00:19:26 I consider a kind of, you'll find it looks like caricature, but that is exactly what
00:19:32 we have in Cameroon.
00:19:34 I think we should watch this first before we come in.
00:19:37 Let's watch what generally happens in Cameroon on our land.
00:19:43 We are harvesting stems today, the 9th of June, 2020.
00:19:48 These are the improved high yielding variety stems, TMB450.
00:19:57 We invite you guys to place your order.
00:20:01 The month of June, we are planting to July, right up to October.
00:20:12 Okay.
00:20:16 Contact Evodea Cactava Corporation Project Cameroon for your stem.
00:20:23 We are doing great.
00:20:24 We supply everywhere in Cameroon.
00:20:27 And he's proud of it.
00:20:35 This is just an example of what happens there.
00:20:37 At this level, when, how are we going to get to what we are going to be talking about here,
00:20:44 transformation?
00:20:45 Dr. Tuminta, you wanted to react to that.
00:20:48 You answered my question and link it to what Blaise was saying.
00:20:52 When you watch that.
00:20:56 A lot of farmers confront hobby to business and passions to agricultural productivity.
00:21:04 That is where the junk, a considerable junk of our population spends their time.
00:21:11 Doing everything themselves.
00:21:14 It's a big challenge for us.
00:21:16 It's a big challenge for feeding in the industries, the machines.
00:21:22 We just need to understand that the global economy is at the fourth revolution.
00:21:28 We have gone through first industrial revolution which was about mechanization.
00:21:35 The second industrial revolution was about mass production.
00:21:39 Then technological transformations which is the third revolution.
00:21:43 Now we have internet of things and technology is coming in.
00:21:46 Where is that woman?
00:21:48 Not even on the first industrial revolution.
00:21:51 There is no mechanizations.
00:21:53 That is a big problem in this country.
00:21:55 And that is where the majority of our scientists...
00:21:57 Exactly.
00:21:58 We have not even gotten into the mechanizations.
00:22:00 We have not gotten into mechanizations.
00:22:02 And why is it?
00:22:04 It's just because that sector which was, I think the government brought in a very interesting structure
00:22:10 which was the Ministry of Agriculture and Royal Development.
00:22:14 And while you look at China, the Royal companies, the Royal industrial companies
00:22:21 feeds the industries by producing agricultural products.
00:22:25 Our Royal Development, the budget allocated to the Royal Development is not significant
00:22:31 to make sure that we can build ecosystem.
00:22:34 It's not about getting one woman.
00:22:36 We need to create an ecosystem where these women can figure out, get the machines.
00:22:40 You don't want a farmer to buy, to purchase a tractor that would use for 3 hectares.
00:22:47 You need to bring them into cooperative, get machines cooperative, put investment there,
00:22:52 bring in the land reforms of my co-pilot, as I rightly said.
00:22:57 And again, bring the skills.
00:23:00 We have agricultural extension workers.
00:23:02 Agriculture is no more sexy like we saw in the early 2011
00:23:08 where the second generation agriculture was propagated.
00:23:12 So that's where we are. We need to change the mindset.
00:23:15 We need to talk about agricultural entrepreneurs, not about meeting subsistence needs.
00:23:22 And the whole issue we are discussing here is that we need to change, bring a paradigm shift
00:23:28 at the early stage, which is about trainings, bringing in irrigation, enhancing irrigation.
00:23:34 We had all those things some years back.
00:23:36 The budget of Medinor, UNVDA and the others are not really significant
00:23:45 to make sure that the agricultural extension workers bring that what we call proximity support system to the farmers.
00:23:52 People just jump in, put in money and at the end of the day it doesn't come.
00:23:56 We do not have the productivity.
00:23:58 Again, sustainable agricultural practices, we are talking about producing in bulk, in quantity and quality
00:24:05 before we go to the transformations.
00:24:08 We have seen, I mean, there is already an educational process going on.
00:24:12 If you go to those exhibitions around, you will see that a considerable number of our populations,
00:24:18 they are actually doing some minor artisanal transformations.
00:24:22 But now, if you bring in industry with a certain amount of money,
00:24:26 do you think that those factories will be fed?
00:24:29 We know about the history of Saint Malima, Edea, Cassava and so on.
00:24:33 The PAPMI program that the state put, brought in was so important,
00:24:36 the first stage was very successful, people went in and reproduction of agriculture, cassava, maize.
00:24:43 But again, the uptake by some certain partners that we had were not there.
00:24:50 And then the sustainability was not there.
00:24:53 And also, we are brought on board, they did not respect their own part of the contract.
00:24:58 But Kylan, I'm just going to add to Doug's point.
00:25:02 When we were younger, I think when I was in primary school, we had a song we sang for 11th February,
00:25:07 which says the Green Revolution has many, many instruments of promotion,
00:25:10 so they use less than our hands with our parents informing agriculture and promoting agriculture.
00:25:15 And it was sustainable. We were growing up knowing that the Green Revolution is something important,
00:25:21 we should work with our parents in the farms, we should enlarge farms.
00:25:24 And there were agro-pastoral shows where grandparents would want to make sure that they have the biggest cassavas,
00:25:30 the biggest cuckoo yams or yams to take to agro-pastoral shows.
00:25:33 We still have them today, they are not as regular as they were.
00:25:36 Do we have agro-pastoral shows? I don't think I've reported on agro-pastoral shows
00:25:40 since the one that was held in Ebola, some modern educated group.
00:25:45 But I mean like it was every year, there was agro-pastoral show every year,
00:25:49 and farmers worked extra hard because they knew that their produce could be rewarded.
00:25:55 And in that way, people who had to transform also have a lot of variety from which to select for their transformation.
00:26:02 So I think we should go back to where it used to work.
00:26:05 There's no harm in copying the right example.
00:26:07 What example that works somewhere, let us copy. And we even had it in our own home.
00:26:11 So we should go back to the Green Revolution, let children...
00:26:14 I'm sure that there are some children who are at 20, 15, 10 years old who don't know how to work a farm.
00:26:19 We can go back to that point, go back to farming.
00:26:22 At a different level, at a technological level.
00:26:26 At a different level, at a technological level.
00:26:27 That is right.
00:26:28 To get to a technological level, you should at least master the basics.
00:26:31 Because for our parents to tell you that you have to cultivate one hectare of farm,
00:26:36 you should at least know how to begin from one ridge of farm.
00:26:39 One row and then it grew up bigger.
00:26:41 That is right.
00:26:42 But now the issue is agricultural modernization is the use of industry supplied input in farming.
00:26:49 Meaning that there should be industries that supply these inputs,
00:26:55 which primarily refers to going back to the 19th century way, but modernizing it.
00:27:03 And also improving it, coming up with innovations, biological, chemical, agronomical innovations
00:27:08 that people will see that this is where we are anchoring from.
00:27:11 We should anchor from somewhere, grow and you explode it.
00:27:15 You are very right. You are making allusion to the Industrial Revolution.
00:27:19 You want the technological revolution to be merged with those industrial revolution
00:27:24 and then propel us to another place.
00:27:27 And that exactly what you are taking forward, what Dr. Tumente was talking about.
00:27:32 We should boost production and that is where the concept Dr. Teta Emmanuel Fon's focus is.
00:27:41 He has a concept, multi-product food transformation product units.
00:27:45 Tell us exactly how this concept you have can change our story in the agricultural sector in Cameroon.
00:27:54 Yeah, thank you very much. I have listened to the other panelists really speak.
00:28:00 I am really glad that we are getting very conscious of where the challenges are focused.
00:28:07 You see, if you look at Cameroon, our greatest challenge is not actually at the level of production.
00:28:13 We are already producing a lot. Cameroon produces about 5 million tons of cassava, about that,
00:28:19 about the same quantity of plantains, about 30,000 tons of sweet potatoes and so on.
00:28:25 Post-harvest losses are about 30 to 40 percent.
00:28:28 That is bad. There is harvest loss. Maybe you should tell us what that is.
00:28:31 Yeah, that is the amount of food that gets lost after harvest.
00:28:36 So, if you go to fruits and even things like tomatoes, you would realize it goes sometimes up to about 75 percent.
00:28:42 So, you would notice that there is a whole lot of food that we are losing each year.
00:28:47 And this happens every year. You know, our food is very cheap in world market where we are exporting.
00:28:53 So, our post-harvest losses are high up there.
00:28:55 If the farmers don't sell, it is going to be missing into empty space.
00:29:00 So, they have no choice but to sell to multinational companies at almost nothing.
00:29:05 So, where is the problem? The problem is that we have not invested in transformation.
00:29:11 Because we don't really have to put a lot of energy in investing in cultivation.
00:29:15 If we invest in transformation, those transformation units will coordinate the cultivation.
00:29:21 Because the raw materials will be a need that they need, they want.
00:29:25 Because that is going to feed the transformation units.
00:29:28 If we have transformation units at regional levels in Cameroon,
00:29:32 multi-product transformation units, I need to specify.
00:29:36 Yes.
00:29:37 Because you see, I have studied a lot of factories.
00:29:39 Multi-product, what does that mean?
00:29:40 Multi-product meaning that we don't focus on a single product. Why?
00:29:43 Because our agricultural pattern or our agricultural system in Africa is still dependent on seasons.
00:29:51 If we are depending our agricultural system on seasons, what that means is that we are not having control.
00:29:58 In the West, they are able to, we are just copying and pasting,
00:30:02 but in the West, they are able to use greenhouses as the other panelists indicated.
00:30:06 So, they have control of environmental temperatures.
00:30:09 They can control harvest. They can control cultivation.
00:30:11 They just need to work with time.
00:30:13 But here in Africa, we are still using the seasons.
00:30:16 But all is not lost. What can we do?
00:30:19 We can be able to cultivate a cross-section of crops and use our harvest pattern with the seasons,
00:30:26 so that we know at one point, because despite the fact that we are using the seasons,
00:30:31 these crops are not all harvested at the same time within the year.
00:30:34 So, we can have a single factory that can transform not just cassavas, but something else.
00:30:41 I listened to, recently, an outing, the relaunching of the Sangalima cassava transformation.
00:30:49 A factory, for example, I don't know if people are actually reading,
00:30:53 the factory is said to be 120 tons per day.
00:30:56 The factory is said to have been allocated 150 hectares of land.
00:31:00 If you do simple mathematics, you would notice that factory is going to work just for 28 days per year.
00:31:05 So, these are some of the fundamental...
00:31:07 28 days?
00:31:08 Yeah, 28 days.
00:31:09 In 300 hours?
00:31:10 If you do the calculation, that is if the factory is working at full capacity, 120,
00:31:13 and how long is it going to take it to consume all the cassava coming out from 150 hectares of land?
00:31:19 It's about 23 tons of cassava comes out from 1 hectare of land.
00:31:24 Those are standard figures.
00:31:25 So, this is already potentially a white elephant project.
00:31:28 But what can we do in order to save that?
00:31:31 We can simply create a multi-product food transformation unit there.
00:31:36 Because if it's going to work only this short time, in a year,
00:31:40 we could add other products that it could also harvest, buy from locals, and so on,
00:31:46 to be able to sustain the initiative.
00:31:49 So, this concept of multi-product food transformation unit is the most effective, sustainable way.
00:31:57 Because that is exactly what I do at Afrobrains, which is the institution that I decided to use as a pilot,
00:32:03 to demonstrate that in Africa, a food transformation unit can be established and it functions sustainably.
00:32:10 We produce about 8 different products in the food market,
00:32:15 and it has been proven that if we're able to produce several products following our seasons of harvest and transformation,
00:32:22 it is going to be very sustainable.
00:32:24 Yes, you will tell us more about these products that you produce and transform.
00:32:31 That's what you're talking about.
00:32:32 That's right.
00:32:33 Which are they? How do you transform them?
00:32:35 Yeah, of course, we do collaborate with local farmers.
00:32:38 We accompany them in cultivation.
00:32:40 That is the reason why I said if you invest in transformation,
00:32:43 that transformation is going to coordinate cultivation.
00:32:47 So, we collaborate with local farmers,
00:32:49 and we do accompany them and buy the raw materials that they produce,
00:32:54 ranging from cassavas, from sweet potatoes, from plantains, from granules in the north, and so on.
00:33:01 So, in different parts, we have raw materials from different parts of Cameroon,
00:33:05 and we do transform them to finished products, ranging from cooking oil, cold-pressed cooking oil.
00:33:10 Because, you see, we're not only focusing on production of food, but healthy food.
00:33:15 Because, experience has shown that a huge chunk of the food that we're importing into this country is very unhealthy.
00:33:23 When you have a product being imported, labeled as bleached and enriched,
00:33:27 what that means is that it's junk food.
00:33:29 Bleached, why do you bleach in the first place?
00:33:31 Why don't you leave it natural?
00:33:33 Enriched, you don't enrich it with natural products.
00:33:36 You enrich it with synthetic products from the laboratory.
00:33:39 Science has also shown that these synthetic products do not synchronize with human frequency, with human body.
00:33:44 So, it is not even very good for human consumption.
00:33:47 Gluten, which is found in wheat, is something that is not even digestible by the human body.
00:33:52 Why are we even importing wheat?
00:33:54 We import about a million tons of wheat every year into this country.
00:33:58 Meanwhile, we're losing more than 6 million tons of cassava combined with plantains and all that.
00:34:03 If we were to convert all the cassava that we're losing as post-harvest loss,
00:34:07 combine the plantains we're losing as post-harvest loss, and sweet potatoes,
00:34:11 you would realize we wouldn't need, we convert that into flour, we wouldn't need to import wheat flour into Cambodia.
00:34:16 And you have several flours that you made from, I avoided us bringing those here,
00:34:24 because you have brand name, we cannot do any advert here.
00:34:27 I gather you have a chufla?
00:34:30 Yeah, that's right. We have a chufla, of course we produce that from Igbo kukuyams,
00:34:34 and Igbo kukuyam is even under threat, so we're working very hard to see that
00:34:38 we don't have a situation where Igbo kukuyam is going to become extinct in Cameroon.
00:34:44 So we also produce ekwang flour, we also produce rice flour.
00:34:47 Rice, this rice flour is not from the rice that is imported.
00:34:50 Like I said, the rice that is imported is produced out of cassava chips using machines.
00:34:54 But we're using the rice that we're producing in Cameroon, cultivating in Cameroon, so it's very healthy food.
00:35:00 So we also produce cooking oil and a lot of other products.
00:35:04 Yes, after talking about all the foods, I cannot keep a lady who is sitting close to you,
00:35:10 when you hear that, you are comforted?
00:35:13 I'm comforted because he doesn't know, but I consume most of the transformed products.
00:35:19 Jealous!
00:35:20 And the waterful flour, for example, is really fast for working class women, you understand what we mean?
00:35:27 You come back home, you're tired, you need to do this very fast,
00:35:30 but the aquaflour is such a facility, like you don't have to go to the mortar to start pounding kukuyam from scratch,
00:35:37 it is really fast and it tastes and smells as good as the actual pounding in the mortar from scratch.
00:35:44 And it's great to have him talking to us about it and it is also great,
00:35:50 the ekwang flour, for example, really helps us to go faster.
00:35:53 You mean you use all these flours that he's talking about?
00:35:56 Yes, Kilian.
00:35:57 This is serious.
00:35:58 I consume Cameroonian.
00:36:00 We just avoided bringing that here because the containers have brand names, we cannot bring them to the press.
00:36:05 I'm not doing any publicity, but what they produce is really good for us to save time.
00:36:11 And that's what we are talking about because in my TV house, we did a report on Friday about Bobolo consumption.
00:36:20 And you see how much work this man put into the Bobolo production.
00:36:24 It's a lot of work.
00:36:28 For those who are not Cameroonian, you have to grate cassava, put it into leaves, tie it, tie it with ropes,
00:36:35 and then cook for a good period of time.
00:36:38 It is true that it is healthy, but now you look at how much time is being put into the grating, the packaging, the cooking,
00:36:47 and it does not last.
00:36:49 After a few days, it starts getting fermented.
00:36:52 But now the difference with what he produces or what is transformed is that it is more resistant.
00:36:58 You can preserve your flower for a longer time because it is in powder form.
00:37:02 And if you were aiming to carry it to other parts of the world, it is modernized.
00:37:07 It is more modernized and yes, it's better.
00:37:09 Before I come to the economies, when you listen to him, when you listen to Dr. Teta, I think he's so amazing.
00:37:16 And we should extend that to other aspects of our agricultural sector.
00:37:23 Yeah, exactly. I think it's a lofty initiative which needs to be promoted and encouraged, the transformation process.
00:37:31 But one thing I am a bit skeptical of is when we bring in these machines, like he was mentioning that some of them,
00:37:39 when they work to full capacity, they actually need a lot of products, like raw material.
00:37:45 And this is a problem which we have because many people are still doing farming at the subsistence level.
00:37:49 We need to upgrade and it's taking a lot of time for us to upgrade.
00:37:53 Many youths who are involved in agriculture, they cultivate less than a hectare.
00:37:58 Just imagine now with the African Potential Free Trade Agreement, under that regime,
00:38:05 like today Cameroon will be receiving a consignment to the CRIB report under that regime.
00:38:10 What are we going to sell to other countries in order to maintain our balance of payment?
00:38:15 So it really needs to boost production.
00:38:20 And then get into transformation.
00:38:23 We may find ourselves investing a lot in transformation when there is no production to fit the transformation process.
00:38:29 But what the economists say is that the raw material that we produce, we don't transform.
00:38:34 When we give out, we get the same or even not the same quality, the price having been raised or multiplied by 100.
00:38:44 So absolutely we have to go into transformation.
00:38:48 I do agree, I do agree.
00:38:50 But one of the things is we should, at the level of transformation, we should focus on sectors,
00:38:55 on maybe commodity or goods which already have high production.
00:39:00 For instance, cocoa. If you look at cocoa, just recently the price at the dollar price has really increased.
00:39:06 I think 1,280 francs per kilogram or so yesterday.
00:39:10 And now we really produce a lot of cocoa.
00:39:13 But most of this cocoa is sold as cocoa beaks.
00:39:15 We don't really transform them in Cameroon and then it's processed maybe somewhere in France or in London
00:39:20 and then they send us a box of chocolate.
00:39:22 And we pay 20, 50 times more.
00:39:25 So I think we should focus for now, I think the country can focus on goods which already have high production in terms of volume.
00:39:33 Because when you invest in the transformation, you can easily have raw materials.
00:39:36 But if you focus on other things like cassava, we don't really,
00:39:39 I've never seen any very vast cassava plantation anywhere across the country.
00:39:43 Or maybe any potato seed.
00:39:45 But don't lose, I think that feed masses, we need to do that.
00:39:48 Dr. Tuminter, I saw you drawing the pedigrees, the economic pedigrees to explain this to us.
00:39:57 What this transformation, Dr. Tata, is talked about and what Bliss is talking about.
00:40:04 How do we economically make Cameroon better with what we have?
00:40:09 You see, I admire Dr. Tata. We have met some time ago when he just came to Cameroon.
00:40:15 The interesting thing he did was to take time, study the economy, study the behavioral patterns of Cameroonian agriculture,
00:40:23 eating pattern, and fine-tune his machine and came out with what he had.
00:40:27 But that's so important.
00:40:30 We have to ask ourselves a question.
00:40:33 If one of Dr. Tata, two people, what do we really need?
00:40:39 And the National Development Strategy gave us the best solutions, which was developing national champions.
00:40:45 We can't, at the same pace we are going, in developing agricultural entrepreneurs,
00:40:53 we cannot succeed in coming out of this bottleneck.
00:40:58 What do I mean by that?
00:41:00 We need to create national champions.
00:41:02 We need to create a local ecosystem, creating an environment where, across the value chain,
00:41:11 he raised something about which value chain do we specialize on.
00:41:16 Dr. Tata came with this concept of multiple-purpose transformational unit.
00:41:19 He said it doesn't matter if you have the machines to transform the different goods.
00:41:24 But as an economist, I say it matters if we have multiple specializations for multiple-purpose transformational unit.
00:41:31 Those go together, because to have multiple transformational units, you need multiple specializations beneath.
00:41:37 Meaning, where the production units are being pushed, we need to have multiple crops.
00:41:44 And the government needs to look at a specialty, meaning which are the value chains that are cross-cutting,
00:41:52 that will create the necessary jobs, attract the necessary incomes, and feed our people,
00:41:58 which then become competitive, respecting quality.
00:42:02 Because the African continental free trade is coming, like a free trade, but there is something hidden,
00:42:08 which is, let's say, immaterial tariff system or barriers, which are the qualities.
00:42:16 If we produce without the right qualities, and what he is saying, which is basically true,
00:42:21 if we push in bigger companies at the transformational unit and give them the incentives to control the quality at the production stage,
00:42:30 then they take over to train, because they will buy it.
00:42:33 It is in their enlightened self-interest. And that's very important.
00:42:37 This is what I wanted to do, with the explanation that you have given, which to me sounds like an economic lesson.
00:42:43 Take one of our crops that we have, take corn, take millet, take cassava, and show us practically,
00:42:53 what you mean by multi-distinct in production in one or several areas of our country.
00:43:01 Let's take the famous, I do not believe that cassava will take us to bring the economic, the agricultural revolution that we have.
00:43:10 But let's take cassava, for example.
00:43:13 Which one do you think?
00:43:14 If I bring in cotton, people will shout, but cotton is the highest.
00:43:18 Bring it in, just that example.
00:43:19 Let's use cotton, for example. With cotton, if you look at the dresses we all put,
00:43:26 look at the importations of dresses, of fabrics that we get, second-hand dresses, it blocks the whole economy.
00:43:34 But the number of youths and women that are working within these sectors are enormous.
00:43:40 When we just by producing cotton, we have oil, we have other by-products, I think these machines could produce us oil and other issues.
00:43:49 Then, Ethiopia developed using cotton, and attracted multinational companies.
00:43:54 But what you ask me is about, how do we come out with multipurpose products?
00:43:58 Yes.
00:43:59 So what he is saying is that we need the quantity of products with quality coming to the factories.
00:44:05 So if you use cotton as an example, we bring in technologies, we bring in irrigation practices, we bring in the markets, connecting them with the transmission units,
00:44:17 creating cooperatives, making sure that youths are involved within these sectors.
00:44:21 You look at farmers' educations and sustainable practices within this sector, it is great.
00:44:28 But cotton alone, in our economy, would not be sustainable because cotton is regional dependent,
00:44:38 and let's say climate dependent, except otherwise that we use greenhouse agriculture, which is something that is very insensitive.
00:44:44 Now, the multipurpose, the multiproducts variable means we can take cotton, and we make sure that the whole value chain is efficient.
00:44:52 We take at the same time palm oil, the value chains are efficient.
00:44:56 We take cassava, we make sure the value chains are efficient.
00:45:00 So that at the end of the day, once we have the multipurpose, the multiproducts coming in,
00:45:05 they are coming in quantity, in quality, and competitive for the multipurpose transformational unit to be able to run.
00:45:15 And Kiren, so the debate is so interesting because we have an important industry in this country that never functions for approximately 40 years at full capacity.
00:45:28 It was Rio Tinto, Alukam, that immediately they turned the machine up to 50% of the energy requirement.
00:45:39 They caused a lot of electricity shortages. So it was not so important for them.
00:45:46 So that's what I'm saying. We shouldn't move in with multipurpose without making sure that we can supply the energy and the products that we need.
00:45:55 Yes, he has touched on this regional transformational unit you are talking about.
00:46:00 Did you identify some of these regional products, crops that we can highlight and then make the regional transformation products effective in Cameroon?
00:46:16 Which region or which section for which products?
00:46:20 Yes, thank you. With the unit I have currently in Yaounde, I'm able to deal with farmers from all over Cameroon.
00:46:31 The farmers in the north will produce for you a lot of granites.
00:46:35 So you go and meet their largest during pre-harvest, pre-planting season and you pay them.
00:46:42 And they do the cultivation and they count the number of bags you paid for and they send to you in the trucks.
00:46:49 We have the roads up there. So it's very feasible.
00:46:53 That is in the north?
00:46:55 Yes, in the north we can have granites, we can have millet and the way they also produce the foods.
00:47:00 With the regional transformation units, it serves the people there.
00:47:04 It is producing the food. That is producing what you eat and eat what you produce.
00:47:09 The way we do fufu in the south is slightly different from the way fufu is done in the north.
00:47:15 So they can do the fufu there very well. They are given the training, they will do the fufu there very well.
00:47:21 You come to the center, there's a lot of tubers here in the center which you can also convert.
00:47:27 You know a lot of people here do bobolo which you can do in other ways in such a way that it can be shipped abroad.
00:47:34 You go to the southwest, you go to Bolova, northwest.
00:47:37 Each of these regions have certain foods that the people are already used to cultivating.
00:47:44 All you have to do is when a unit is established there, that unit is established for the transformation of those categories of products that are common in those regions.
00:47:55 And what will happen in the long run is that you will find every region being an expert in producing certain products.
00:48:02 So we would have products that we are shipping to.
00:48:06 Equatorial Guinea is there, they don't have a lot of food.
00:48:08 Gabon, they are there, they don't cultivate food like we do.
00:48:11 So the markets are huge. So in the north, if we say we want to start exporting, for example, cooking oil that is produced in the north from the granotes,
00:48:21 then we know that cooking oil is coming from the north.
00:48:23 If we want to export palm oil, maybe we're producing from the southwest, we're going to produce it from the transformation unit in the southwest.
00:48:32 So this is how we can be able to regionalize these transformation units.
00:48:37 And guess what? The number of jobs it's going to create is going to be huge because we're going to have youths being employed in cultivation, in direct cultivation.
00:48:46 The people in the various... we don't have to go into land litigation issues with the villagers because they are the ones doing the cultivation and feeding the factories.
00:48:57 So the youths will be involved in cultivation, the youths will be involved in the transformation, in the distribution, in the marketing, in the sales, and so on.
00:49:06 So you think government is not doing this and government should do this?
00:49:09 Yes, it is a suggestion. That is why I'm actually talking about it here. It's a suggestion I'm giving that it will be very feasible.
00:49:16 The social impact is going to be very huge and it's going to engage Cameroonians to work together.
00:49:22 Because you see, one of the things, and I really need to emphasize on this, we should not sit in Cameroon and think that funding for industrialization of this country is going to come from abroad.
00:49:33 It's never going to come. No one is going to fund you against its own interest.
00:49:38 I read somewhere a school in France called École des GERES Économiques. Why do you think they are teaching in such schools?
00:49:45 We need to understand our own economic interest as an African country or as Africans.
00:49:50 We need to know that if we have to industrialize, it's going to be at the expense of those who are buying our raw materials today.
00:49:57 So if we want to industrialize, we need to come together, work together. Our banks should stop being lazy.
00:50:03 Because all I think they are doing is chasing civil servants' salaries.
00:50:07 Instead of looking at smart, intelligent initiatives, initiatives that make sense, study them, work with these people that have these initiatives, create wealth and distribute it in the country.
00:50:19 So I think we have to create local financing sources rather than always depending on what we are going to write and send abroad for us to get funding.
00:50:28 Yes, Kilian, because it is all about, we are still focused on agricultural transformation.
00:50:35 We should remind ourselves that it is the process over time by which the agri-food system evolves from subsistence-oriented and farm-centered into more commercialized, productive and farm-centered.
00:50:48 Yes, we don't have much time. We just have to look at the role technology has to play for us to be able to transform our agriculture.
00:50:57 We can't even deny the priceless role of technology in all of this. We have seen from our own Cameroonian brother that we can do, if we just invest more.
00:51:08 That is somebody's personal initiative which is giving us fufu, guangyin powder, achuwin powder.
00:51:15 Imagine that there are other brands up in the north. They have other foodstuffs that they eat in the north.
00:51:21 If someone is in the north and can produce fufu rice, for example, that can be commercialized.
00:51:29 You don't have to soak the rice, dry it, grind it before you consume.
00:51:34 If someone can come up with such an idea of powder fufu rice, it will be helpful to some of us who are down south and want to make fufu rice.
00:51:40 So the government should just try to step up subsidies.
00:51:44 Yes, bless the role of technology.
00:51:47 I think technology has a very big role to play. I once did a report on a young Cameroonian in the Mungo division, Roland Fomunda, who is doing something on greenhouse technology.
00:51:58 The type of stuff he cultivates is really amazing. He cultivates bell pepper, which is mostly imported.
00:52:05 And then he also cultivates cherry tomatoes. So these are things which are highly consumed here in Cameroon.
00:52:11 It's probably among the middle and upper income class.
00:52:14 He does these things using the greenhouse technology. He does it all season. He harvests every week.
00:52:19 He puts it in the market. That helps to bring down the price and the quality is quite good.
00:52:23 So I think technology is at a level where we need to adopt technology in terms of production.
00:52:29 We adopt technology in terms of transformation and also at the level of marketing, like using online technology to market our products.
00:52:37 The importance of this technology, Dr. Tumenta.
00:52:40 Climate smart agriculture is the key of the day. Climate smart agriculture is so important because technology has come to stay.
00:52:49 Predictability, technology for predictability, the internet of things, using drones to let's say do phytosanitary treatment of the farms.
00:53:03 There are so many. So irrigation is the beginning of everything.
00:53:08 We have water all around. We just need to create those irrigation paths, bring in the technology and then we scale up the production.
00:53:17 That's so important at all levels in overcoming the infrastructural barriers.
00:53:23 The internet of things will tell us. We have seen what Chartered DPP has brought in.
00:53:28 So technology is so important and technology is not just technology is so important at all levels, at input level, production level, storage level, transformation, marketing and market information level.
00:53:45 We need them and I think that it's just so important in building a sustainable ecosystem.
00:53:50 Yes, Dr. Teta Emmanuel, you are doing the transformation with machines that you yourself build. How does it happen?
00:53:58 Yes, basically that is one of the things I studied, machine building.
00:54:03 Where was that?
00:54:05 That's in China. So we do machine building and optimization.
00:54:09 So it has always been my wish that we begin to, because you see most of the technology is already available.
00:54:17 Sometimes I feel really uncomfortable when I listen to people keep on singing this issue of technology transfer, technology transfer.
00:54:26 The technology is already here in Cameroon. What we need to do is to use it, to put it into application.
00:54:31 I wish to, let me just take this opportunity to appeal because this is the core issue, to appeal Cameroonians to begin to come together and work with some of these initiatives so we can push them forward.
00:54:44 It is very difficult to raise funding when it comes to mechanization of agriculture.
00:54:52 It is my wish that we get to a point where we can even work with farm groups.
00:54:56 We build machines, we supply to them and they don't pay in terms of, they don't pay back in terms of money, but in terms of raw materials.
00:55:03 And that raw material will give them money that will still come to them also as profit.
00:55:08 So we can work interface by a banking institution. So these are ideas, these are concepts that we can, are very workable.
00:55:17 We build machines from cultivation machines, machines that can enhance cultivation, small tractors, mini vehicles that can even get, it is my wish we begin to build mini vehicles that can,
00:55:29 because we have very interesting roads that are very challenging, so we can get small vehicles that can get raw materials from the farm because most of our farmers are complaining.
00:55:39 Spray machines and why not? And also natural cultivation. Encourage our farmers to cultivate and use natural fertilizers.
00:55:49 Because some farmers, I don't know whether it is out of ignorance or something else, use fertilizers that could be deadly and harmful to future generations.
00:55:58 Agriculture, I continue to say, is the easiest way to print money. And you cannot, you don't only print money with agriculture for the present, but also for the future generations.
00:56:08 Yes, this will be your last word because we are going to go around the set and close this very important discussion here.
00:56:18 How do you think what you are doing, transformation, will help in import substitution we are talking about today?
00:56:27 Excellent question. As a matter of fact, I have been burning to see how we are going to proceed after the announcement of the import substitution policy.
00:56:38 I am really hungry to see that we begin to, or government begin to invite those who are engaged.
00:56:47 I know there are some registrations that are ongoing but I am not sure how far it is going. We are already on the last quarter of the year.
00:56:57 So I have a right to be worried that are we going to really have concrete actions that will help in the import substitution?
00:57:04 Because I feel that if we transform, if we buy these raw materials from the local farmers, if we transform them to finished products, we can also export them and this will help to give us, to attract foreign currency.
00:57:16 To make us dependent, independent rather, to make us independent of our production, food production.
00:57:23 We should not forget the fact that lead to all of this is that population growth, urbanization, related challenges, changes in demand and agriculture, including pressure on natural resources and environment.
00:57:33 We should be aware of the fact that the Cameroon of 20 years ago is not the Cameroon of today and the Cameroon of 20 years to come will definitely be different.
00:57:43 So let us be proactive enough to foresee this and reduce cost of living by just industrializing our farming.
00:57:50 Yes, Blaise, you deal with finances most of the time in your reporting.
00:57:55 Yes, how will this transformation, if we succeed to do this, help us in this import substitution policy?
00:58:04 That we very much need because we don't have so much that we offer, we receive most of what we have, we consume.
00:58:13 I think it's going to help much because when you see over the past years, many importers have been complaining because the country doesn't have hard currency to buy.
00:58:22 So if we can do this local transformation, it's going to enable us not to import more and deplete our foreign reserves and that's going to boom the economy.
00:58:32 So I think it's something which is very lofty.
00:58:35 As you have said, we are depleting our reserves because we have to do that to survive.
00:58:41 Dr. Tumenta, we talk about import substitution, how do we use what we have to actually get to this policy to make it work?
00:58:50 Yes, I think the best thing the government needs to do is to identify those people that are doing something, doing it very well, make them to become the national champions.
00:58:59 We need to pump the money to provide the necessary resources, financial resources, technical resources.
00:59:06 We need to create an ecosystem or what we call a competitive pack or special economic zones.
00:59:12 Once you go at the local level and create a zone where the incentives are given, the controls are given and then we will have them coming out.
00:59:21 And again, we need proximity support system. Let's go and support them and then take them to the market so that they can sell.
00:59:28 Thank you very much and we must tell you ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for not having an official from the Ministry of Agriculture.
00:59:36 We did everything up to the last minute to have an official from there to our set and we did not succeed.
00:59:43 You watch us, Dr. Emmanuel Tatamphon, who is an expert in machine building and agricultural value chain engineering.
00:59:54 We had our own Dr. Tuminta Kennedy, who is an economist. You actually enjoyed his expertise in economists.
01:00:02 We had Bless. I always like to begin with Bless, but you always prefer that I should start with Aminde Bless Atabon, in that order, freelance reporter and editor.
01:00:14 And the one lady in the house who defended all our ladies around the world, Promise Akante.
01:00:22 Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen, for coming and we want to thank all of you who gave us your very precious time to watch today's edition of Press R, which will be rebroadcast on Monday at 2.30.
01:00:36 Thank you very much once again.
01:00:39 [Music]