Wanderley Ribeiro, who was speaking at the conference on “Financing of Agricultural Production Chains and Food Security”, organized by the Association of Banks (Abanc), explained that only 50 percent of the rice produced, that is, 20 thousand tons, are made available to the market.
“We import husked rice and produce 40 thousand tons of paddy rice. [But] for every 100 kilos, only the equivalent of 50 percent is rice that can be consumed, the rest is husk, bran and other products”, he clarified.
“We truly only have 20 thousand [tons] to consume”, highlighted Wanderley Ribeiro, highlighting that Angola would need to produce 1.2 million tons of rice to replace the import of this product.
“When we compare 40 thousand tons with 1.2 million tons we realize how far we are from what our capacity to supply our country is effectively”, he expressed.
The official stressed that rice is part of the basic food basket of Angolans, as well as the Congolese, whose consumption is also around 700 thousand tons, of which 350 thousand tons are produced locally.
“We have the same consumption configuration, but we are very far apart”, said Wanderley Ribeiro, founding partner of Bonsae - a cereal producing company in the province of Malanje, specializing in rice.
According to the president of AAPA, the municipality of Luquembo “is establishing itself as a rice capital at a national level”, with at least 300 thousand hectares of reserves for the production of this product.
“In Angola, we would only need 300 thousand hectares to become self-sufficient (…), because 300 thousand hectares times four tons per hectare, will give us the production of 1.2 million tons that we need”, he noted.
