The President, African Development Bank (AfDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, says the bank is set to deliver certified wheat and other staple crops seeds to 20 million farmers.

Adesina said this in a document titled, “Averting an African Food Crisis: The African Food Production Facility” and obtained on Monday, August 8, 2022, in Abuja.

He said the initiative, which is part of activities being undertaken by the bank, would tackle food crisis in African countries including Nigeria.

The president said the delivery of seeds and increased access to agricultural fertilisers would be done through the bank’s African Emergency Food Production Facility.

Adesina said that, within the next two years, the facility would allow farmers to produce 38 million additional tonnes of food.

He said that part of the plan was a 30 per cent increment in local production worth an estimated $12 billion.

He also said that it would facilitate better global investment in Africa’s agricultural sector.

Adesina said that the facility would also support enhanced governance and policy reforms.

“Half a dozen more programmes are expected to get underway by September as more governments apply to the facility,’’ he said.

According to him, food aid cannot feed Africa because Africa does not need bowls in hand.

The president said that the African Emergency Food Production Facility had benefited from stakeholder consultations.

He said the price of wheat had soared in Africa by more than 45 per cent since the war in Ukraine began.

Adesina also said fertiliser prices had gone up by 300 per cent while the continent faced a fertilizer shortage of two million metric tonnes.

Adesina further said it would create a platform to advocate critical policy reforms to solve the structural issues that impede farmers from receiving modern inputs.

He said it included strengthening national institutions overseeing input markets.

According to him, the facility had a structure for working with multilateral development partners.

This he said would ensure rapid alignment and implementation, enhanced reach, and effective impact.

The president also said it would increase technical preparedness and responsiveness.

He said it included short, medium, and long-term measures to address both the urgent food crisis and long-term sustainability and resilience of Africa’s food systems.

The mayor of London is being urged to make an 11th hour intervention and halt plans for a new four-lane road tunnel under the River Thames that opponents say would worsen pollution and exacerbate the climate crisis.

Tunnelling equipment is on site on the banks of the Thames, and work on the £2bn Silvertown tunnel is due to start in the coming weeks.

But the scheme has faced widespread opposition from local people, politicians, climate scientists and medical experts who say it would increase traffic and worsen public health in some of the most deprived boroughs in the country.

They also say it will lock in high carbon transport for generations to come.

ScottishPower is planning to build a £150m green hydrogen plant at the Port of Felixstowe to power trains, trucks and ships.

The energy company has drawn up proposals for a 100megawatt plant at the Suffolk port which will provide enough fuel to power 1300 hydrogen trucks from 2026.

The company, owned by €63bn Spanish utilities giant Iberdrola, said demand for the green fuel had stepped up since petrol and diesel prices began to soar last year, emboldening the firm to invest.

It has submitted an application to the government’s Net Zero Hydrogen Fund, which provides state backing to develop low-carbon hydrogen projects for the next three years. ScottishPower estimated the whole project could cost between £100m and £150m.

ScottishPower plans to build the facility, which will be around the size of a football pitch, on brownfield land within the port, which is one of the busiest in the UK and a trade hub.

Green hydrogen is produced by using renewable electricity to drive an electrolyser that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen. The gas is burned to produce power, emitting only water vapour and warm air, and no greenhouse gases.

Heatwaves sweeping Europe this summer have brought not just record high temperatures and scorched fields: the drought-stricken waters of Italy’s River Po are running so low they revealed a previously submerged World War Two bomb.

Military experts defused and carried out a controlled explosion on Sunday of the 1,000-pound bomb, which was discovered on July 25 near the northern village of Borgo Virgilio, close to the city of Mantua.

“The bomb was found by fishermen on the bank of the River Po due to a decrease in water levels caused by drought,” Colonel Marco Nasi said.

About 3,000 people living nearby were evacuated for the disposal operation, the army said. The area’s airspace was shut down, and navigation along that stretch of the waterway as well as traffic on a railway line and state road close by were halted.

“At first, some of the inhabitants said they would not move, but in the last few days, we think we have persuaded everyone,” said Borgo Virgilio’s mayor, Francesco Aporti, adding that if people had refused to go, operations would have been halted.

Bomb disposal engineers removed the fuse from the U.S.-manufactured device, which the army said contained 530 pounds of explosive.

Then the bomb squad, escorted by police, transferred the device to a quarry in Medole municipality about 30 miles away, where it was destroyed.

Italy declared a state of emergency last month for areas surrounding the Po, which is the country’s longest river. It accounts for roughly a third of Italy’s agricultural production and is suffering its worst drought for 70 years.