Sub-Saharan African countries will need more than $1.3 trillion to meet consumption demand of its growing population by 2050, the Irish Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine told a business delegation in Lagos, Nigeria.

Simon Conveney, who was leading a delegation of Irish businessmen on a trade mission in Nigeria, said Africa must take agriculture seriously to avoid massive conflict across the continent because of unemployment and food scarcity.

“For sub Saharan Africa as a whole today, the agricultural output is about 300 billion Euros in value, by 2050, the population of sub Saharan Africa would have doubled, by that point in order to meet consumption demand, they will need the agricultural output to be 1.2 trillion Euros ($1.3 trillion) in value by today’s prices terms,” Conveney said.

“On the face of it, it is impossible, but with partnership, technology, new ways of doing things and with real ambition it is possible and it would be Nigeria that will lead the initiative.

“That is a very exiting change and a business opportunity, Ireland will be there to help but ultimately it will be Nigeria’s project.”

According to the World Bank, one in every three people walking on earth in the year 2050 will be an African. The bank estimated that by that time about 2.5 billion people will be Africans, making them double the current populations size and 25 percent of the world’s total.

By 2025 a quarter of people aged under 25 would be  living in Sub-Saharan Africa.

This jump in youthful population coupled by a high economic growth of above 7.5 percent annually will see most African countries that today are considered low income will transition to middle income in the next 15 years, and all but one will be middle income by 2050, according to the Annual Trends and Outlook Report.