Winners emerge in AfDB’s Farming is Cool art contest


Three winners have emerged from African Development Bank’s (AfDB’s) Farming is cool art contest, carting away cash prizes of N1 million, N500,000 and N250,000 for first, second and third places respectively. They are Ezra Anthony, Precious Nnenna Enyinwa and Vivien Okoro.


Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, AfDB President, presented the prizes to the winners while Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, who represented President Muhammadu Buhari, opened the new office complex.

Twenty contestants aged 10 to 16 years took part in the contest. It was part of AfDB’s goal to see a shift in agriculture on the continent, hoping to feed itself and eradicate malnutrition by 2025.

At the inauguration of its complex at Abuja, AfDB inspired secondary school pupils with the Farming is cool contest to launch African economic outlook for 2018, as well as to share the high 5.

Ebrima Faal, Senior Director, Nigeria Country Department, AfDB, said the contest was organised to sow a seed of awareness on the development of the nation’s economy in participants.  He added that the campaign aimed to reverse the idea of young people seeing farming as a last resort by emphasising and promoting it as a viable wealth-creation option.

“Its target is the youth and children to encourage positive thought and action towards an agricultural revolution,” he said.

Seond position winner, Enyinwa, interpreted her painting as harnessing agriculture to alleviate poverty in Africa. Her paintings focused on the five priorities tagged as high five: light up and power Africa, feed Africa, industrialise Africa, integrate and improve the living condition of the people of Africa, which she represented with symbols, electric bulb, basket of food, silhouette of hand shake, education and, silhouette of industry.

Enyinwa explained that feed Africa requires ‘’all of us to strengthen our efforts in agriculture, and to do this we need to get all hands on deck. We need to get more young people involved in farming. Young farmers are the future of Africa. Our rich Africa soil can produce all the food we need to put food on every table and sell the rest to make enough money to send everyone to school in order to achieve the high fives.’’

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