…holds Agrinnovation 6.0
The Lagos State Government is building a strategic alliance to bolster youth agripreneurs engagement in driving enhanced productivity and food security in Africa’s most populous country.
The state government says partnerships that bring together businesses, government, development partners, and civil societies are increasingly important for expanding market access and boosting agricultural production in the country.
Abisola Olusanya, commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Lagos State, said the Agrinnovation Club aims to create a platform that exposes agripreneurs to several ideas, possibilities, and technologies through collaborations that they won’t be able to do on their own.
“We understand the need to mentor and to partner, and as such, we in the Lagos Ministry of Agriculture and Food Systems created the Lagos Agrinnovation Club in 2013,” Olusanya said at the Agrinnovation Hangout 6.0, held recently in Lagos.
She noted that since its establishment, membership of the Agrinnovation Club hangout has increased as businesses come together to support each other’s growth.
“We are growing stronger and stronger. Membership is increasing, but more importantly, seeing the cohesion that is happening across the ecosystem and seeing businesses come together to help one another grow,” she said.
“We are seeing the dividends of that. Many members are thriving. They are going into sections of the food space that otherwise they would not have been able to have their own,” she noted.
“More young people are employed and the food sovereignty, the food security, the food sustainability that we want will surely happen,” she added.
She stressed the need for collaboration across value chains, noting that players’ inability to harmonise data, efforts, technologies, and resources impedes agricultural development in the country.
“Imagine you have an agri-innovation club also in Oyo, Zamfara and Nasarawa. And you have these clusters of cells of like-minded entrepreneurs coming together,” she emphasised.
“It’s just a matter of time before you now have a collaborative and cohesive effort nationally. And then those changes that we want to see will happen. They won’t happen on a large scale,” she noted.
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“Change happens incrementally. And when you do it in bits and pieces, you start to see that by the time you put all those efforts together, the change is already here. And so, that is what we are doing,” he explained.
According to her, last year, the state held the Lagos Agri-Thon, tailored to the Lagos Agri-Innovation Club, where over N100 million was granted to 26 agribusinesses.
She explained that the state is in partnership talks with several organisations, and multilateral and bilateral agencies to have a bigger pool of resources to support more agripreneurs.
Also, Jette Bjerrum, consul general and head of trade, Embassy of the Kingdom of Denmark, in her remarks promised Demark’s continuous support for agribusiness in Lagos and Nigeria.
She described Nigeria’s youthful population as a key asset while urging Nigeria to tap into its demographic advantage to drive innovative solutions to social problems.
She noted that Denmark, with a population of about six million, became a global leader in agricultural production through innovation and mechanisation.
“Agriculture in Denmark is high-tech and highly mechanised. The average Danish farm is efficient and working smarter,” she said.
“We want agriculture to be attractive to the youth as it is in Denmark. It is fancy to work in Denmark’s agricultural sector. It is respectful, passionate, but it is also a structured, professionally trained way of working,” she added.
