29-11-2016
Wesgro welcomes the African Agri Investment Indaba to Cape Town. We believe this conference will go from strength to strength over the coming years as investors, farmers, food companies and suppliers gather in Cape Town annually to plan how to achieve the potential of agriculture across Africa.
It is appropriate for this indaba to take place in Cape Town, because the Western Cape is emerging as Africa's leading agricultural hub. One in five jobs in the Cape comes from the agricultural sector, and - although the province has only 10% of South Africa's land mass - it accounts for 20% of national agricultural production.
Agri-processing is a growing sector, with investors like Excellent Meat (a supplier of Burger King) and AgriProtein setting up processing operations in the Cape in recent years. Cape-based food and agri-processing companies like Distell and Capespan have also recently expanded internationally.
Today half of South Africa's agri-processed exports come from the Western Cape, with food and beverage exports alone bringing more than R50 billion into the province each year.
Drought remains a problem for the sector, but we are confident growth in the sector will continue, despite challenges. Western Cape Economic Opportunities Minister Alan Winde recently launched a groundbreaking climate change response strategy, known as SmartAgri.
At the launch, the MEC explained that, “SmartAgri details concrete action plans for how we can mitigate these threats to build a sustainable agricultural sector which is able to withstand the impact of extreme weather events. Our job is to drive this plan, in partnership with the private sector.”
If government and industry work together to deal with the effects of climate change, then the Western Cape will continue to be an African leader in agricultural exports, and continue to attract major investments in the agri-processing space.
As the agency charged with promoting cape exports and landing investment in the agricultural space, Wesgro is committed to playing our part to make this happen.
