内容摘要：Consistently trailing Lee in opinion polls, Kim has focused on dredging up

Consistently trailing Lee in opinion polls, Kim has focused on dredging up

Data from the government-run statistics agency show that local agriculture contributed 22% of Nigeria’s GDP in the second quarter of 2024, down from 25% in the previous quarter. While the trend has fluctuated in recent years, experts have said agricultural production still does not reflect growing government investment in the sector.Household food imports, meanwhile, rose by 136% from 2023 to 2024, government statistics show.

The decreasing farm yields are being felt elsewhere in Nigeria, especially the south.In Lagos, the price of several items grown in the north have nearly doubled in the last two years, partly due to decreasing supplies. A head of cabbage grown in the north is selling for 2,000 naira ($1.2), nearly double its price a year ago and more than five times the price in Sokoto.Nigerian authorities acknowledge the problem. Many farmers who once harvested up to 10 tons are hardly able to get half that these days, agriculture minister Aliyu Abdullahi said earlier this year.

Nigeria’s President Bola Tinubu and his government have touted agriculture as a means for economic prosperity. Shortly after he took office in May 2023, Tinubu’s government declared a food security state of emergency and announced plans to activate 500,000 hectares of farmland in Nigeria’s land banks, which are mostly in the north.The land banks, however, are yet to be activated.

For more on Africa and development:

The Associated Press receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s, targeting IS and al-Shabab operatives. But despite air support, Somalia’s army remains far from being able to maintain security on the ground, Langley acknowledged.

“The Somali National Army is trying to find their way,” Langley said, adding that they had regained some footing after years of setbacks. “There are some things they still need on the battlefield to be very effective.”Similarly in West Africa, the notion that states could soon have the capacity to counter such threats is a distant prospect, said Beverly Ochieng, an analyst at Control Risks, a security consulting firm. Even before Western influence began to wane in the Sahel, needed military support was limited, threats remained active, and local militaries were left without the tools to confront them.

Western powers with a presence in the Sahel have graduallytheir engagement, either by choice or