According to a recently released World Bank report, Africa holds approximately 50 percent of the world's total uncultivated land, including land which is suitable for cultivation of food crops.

The World Bank report - titled `Growing Africa: Unlocking the Potential of Agribusiness' - said that the uncultivated land in Africa comprises approximately 450 million hectares which are not protected, forested, or densely populated.

With the report also noting that the percentage of renewable water sources used by Africa is 2 percent, vis-a-vis the world's 5 percent, Jamal Saghir - the World Bank's Director of the sustainable Development Department for the Africa Region - said that the country's farmers and its agribusinesses has the potential to create a trillion-dollar food market by the year 2030.

Saghir elaborated that such an achievement would be possible only if Africa expands its farmers' access to more capital, electricity, improved technology and irrigated land for cultivating high-value nutritious foods.

Meanwhile, noting that African countries should try and tap into booming markets in rice, maize, sugar, palm oil, soybeans, feedstock, and bio-fuel to emerge as leading exporters of these commodities in the world, Makhtar Diop, World Bank's VP for Africa Region - said: "The time has come for making African agriculture and agribusiness a catalyst for ending poverty."