About SAPZ Nigeria

The African Development Bank is playing a positive role in catalysing agriculture in Africa into an internationally competitive sector and an important contributor to sustainable development. At its core of this transformation, the Bank is working with governments and the private sector in 11 African countries to create Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) that will turn the rural landscape into economic zones of prosperity and harnessing the power of commercial agriculture and food production.

The SAPZ model, a vision articulated by the African Development Bank’s President, Dr. Akinwumi A. Adesina, was developed as the Bank’s brand for a spatial development solution for rural agricultural transformation across the continent. 

The SAPZ program promotes increased productivity, value addition, market access and private sector investment in select agricultural value chain commodities. The focus is on the promotion of commodities that have a high potential to boost export revenues or import substitution. The program is designed to enhance complementarity with existing or completed projects financed by the Bank including those in the power, transport, water and agriculture sectors.

The Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones initiative: a fundamental change in Africa’s economic transformation