Speaking to Reuters on Friday (March 25), Akinwumi Adesina said the AfDB was planning to launch an emergency food production plan that would focus on rapidly boosting wheat, maize, rice and soybean output.
"The plan is to be able to produce roughly 30 million metric tonnes of food and to get technologies into the hands of 20 million farmers, so you're looking at big scale with small holder farmers."
Like much of the world, African countries are facing rapidly rising consumer prices with the war in Ukraine endangering global wheat and corn supplies and sending fuel prices soaring.
Adesina said that follows the coronavirus pandemic, which had already pushed 24 million more people on the continent into extreme poverty.
"When COVID struck, we were not ready but this time we are fully ready and we will avert a food crisis and we will avert also the impact on inflation but we do need the money to be able to very quickly, intervene and get it done."
Adesina decried the war's impact on Ukraine and it's people but also said it could be an opportunity for Africa.
"The biggest challenge Europe has right now is how to secure its energy supply."
The continent could position itself as a natural gas supplier to Europe, he said, and a refuge for investors fleeing Russia.
"There are a lot of investors that are going to be diversifying out of Russia, of course, right, and they want to diversify into, whether it's energy or whether it's gas, whether it's minerals and metal processing and beneficiation and that's the real opportunity I think for Africa at this point in time."
The International Monetary Fund had already voiced its support to help implement the plan, which will produce food staples worth $12 billion, Adesina said.
The AfDB plans to raise money for the initiative from various emergency support facilities, concessional financing and from the IMF's proposed $50 billion resilient sustainability fund.
