South Sudanese told to invest in agricultural sector

JUBA – As South Sudan faces unprecedented economic crisis, the country’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Josephine Lagu, is urging South Sudan’s 12 million inhabitants to embark on investing in agriculture instead on depending on declining oil revenues and food commodities imported from neighboring countries.

Before the fall of oil prices below $30 a barrel in the international market, oil-rich South Sudan used to import virtually all of its basic requirements from overseas.

Josephine who was speaking after the signing of the Memorandum of understanding, worth 14 million U.S dollar project between the African Development Bank and Ministry of Finance at Ministry’s headquarters in Juba on Wednesday stressed the need to diversified the economics of the world’s youngest national through agricultural production.

“We need to invest in agriculture for agriculture to play its parts in the development of the economics of this country,” she said.

The government official urged the farmers to redouble their efforts to produce enough food to eliminate hunger  in  the country.

“We have 33 million hectares of Arable land and out of that at the moment, we are only cultivating 4% of arable land that we could cultivate to ensure we have sufficient food to feed ourselves in this country as well as to export exceed we could grow,” she expressed.

She revealed that the stability of the country could allow agriculture to contribute effectively to the economics of the country.