Tag: agriculture

FAO Hands Over CAPI System To Federal Ministry Of Agriculture [2017]

In a bid to ensure Nigerians have easy access to more data on agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Nigeria has handed over the Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) system developed with the support of the Agricultural Market and Information System (AMIS) to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

FAO hands over CAPI System to help investors, agriculture merchants, traders and farmers for informed decisions and optimized activities and income. As part of the deliverables of AMIS, the CAPI System was developed in Nigeria for the collection of agricultural data. The CAPI System will be domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) for supervision and monitoring, following the handover ceremony to the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture. It is also equipped with capacity to provide near real-time agriculture data, through crowd-sourced data from various players in the agriculture value chain. The platform has a web-based repository that will provide easy access to agricultural data producing agencies and other agricultural market stakeholders across Nigeria.

Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry Of Agriculture, Dr. Bukar Hassan in his words stated:

“The only way agricultural production can be sustained is when the farmers can be able to reach out to various markets to sell their products, ‎and make some returns   to enable them to invest; today’s event gives us a unique opportunity to move   away from traditional marketing system, monitor and evaluation system to a   more digital and sustainable method where we will be able to ensure that   whatever we have produced, figures we are going to have in terms of production is accurate, and therefore food security will be ensured.”

AMIS is an inter-agency platform housed in FAO. This particular project of AMIS is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. AMIS was initiated in 2011 by the Ministers of Agriculture of the G20 countries to improve food market transparency, coordination and monitor price volatility. AMIS participating countries include all G20 Members as well as Spain and seven additional major exporting and importing countries of the four agricultural commodities which AMIS covers (wheat, rice, maize and soybeans).

 

AFDB Approves $280 Million To Support Nigerian Youths In Agriculture

The President of the African Development Bank (AFDB), Dr Akinwumi Adesina, says the $280 million approved by the bank would be used to encourage Nigerian youths to go into agro-business.

Adesina, represented by Dr Chiji Ojukwu, a Director in AFDB, stated this on Tuesday in Ibadan at the African Youth Agripreneurs (AYA) Forum organised by the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), Ibadan.

Adesina said with International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) training initiative and the financial support from AFDB, more youths would be interested to go into agribusiness. Furthermore, AFDB is working with 33 countries to give assistance to youths in agriculture with Zambia, Sudan, GR Congo, Cameroon and Nigeria already given necessary assistance in 2016.

He said that the Bank was targeting 37,000 youths in Nigeria who would be given $50,000 each as support in agriculture business.

According to Dr. Akinwumi Adesina,

“The $280m that we have approved for Nigeria cannot be enough; we need $1.8 billion to accommodate the 37,000 youths.

This is why we are giving 80 per cent of the money to commercial banks so that they can lend from their own balance sheet and we expect that every dollar we put in would generate five dollars.’’

Adesina said the programme was for young graduates who could easily be trained on agriculture.

Ogun State Partners Spanish Investors on Agricultural Preservation & Processing

Ogun state government has partnered a group of Spanish investors to establish processing clusters to address the issue of agricultural wastage.

The partnership arrangement is expected to focus on collation of various farm produce from different farmers across the state, process and preserve them for value addition.