Other countries in Europe – Portugal, for example – have experienced growth persistently below the euro area average for the past decade due to structural issues that could have been tackled with more determination. Just a few years ago, this group of countries included Germany – then labelled, totally wrongly, the “sick man of Europe”.
The theme of the conference “unlocking private sector capital to scale up impact investments in African agriculture” promises to be a story of shifting the reality of agricultural finance as we know it today. Africa has in the past relied largely on Official Development Assistance and domestic public funding to address socio-economic challenges, many of which have few market-based solutions.