Relying on new technology, the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL), African Development Bank (AfDB) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have commenced a partnership that would see a significant cut in the $35 billion annual food import by the continent.
The collaboration was borne out of concerns that Africa cannot continue to import food considering massive arable land and other resources.
NIRSAL convened agriculture stakeholders to a meeting on Thursday to create a plan for agricultural transformation in Africa, through the adoption of regional and home-grown technologies that are enhanced by strategic partnerships of agriculture multi-stakeholders and experts.
Coming together to deliberate on lasting solutions for the transformation of agriculture in Africa were Managing Director/CEO, NIRSAL Plc, Aliyu Abdulhameed, Director, Agriculture and Agro-Industry, Africa Development Bank (AfDB), Martin Fregene, Deputy Director-General, Partnerships for Delivery, International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) Kenton Dashiell, officials of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) and industry experts from various countries in Africa.
Speaking at meeting held at the NIRSAL’s head office in Abuja, Abdulhameed said, “the background to this is that the AfDB has developed a technology to see how Africa agriculture can leapfrog in order to meet the requirements of the 21st Century- rapid population growth and the fact that Africa imports $35 billion of food commodities from around the world and we know we have sufficient resources to feed Africa, Nigeria in particular, we have land resource, water resource, we have the market opportunities.”
But despite these resources, the technology required to increase yields from subsistent level to commercially viable and surplus of communities and the market to substitute for imports remains a problem.
“We have found in the AfDB TAAT (Technology for Africa Agricultural
Transformation) system a one-stop shop what can give us the capability and the technology required to be applied on the ground to support primary production of virtually all the commodities required in Nigeria and leapfrog the technology overnight,´ Abdulhameed said.
“We believe in NIRSAL, being a risk management company, it is import for us to support any technology that can increase yield. Any increase in yield for farmers means generation of revenue. Generation of revenue means the capacity for us to enable them to access finances because finances can only come when you can demonstrate the generation of sufficient revenue.
“Yield is tied to science, technology and innovation and that is what the TAAT programme of the AfDB is all about.”
AfDB’s Feed Africa initiative targets massive food production on the continent, through improved technology by ensuring increase yield per hectare, as well as, attracting the youth to agriculture.
The meeting was an outcome of the recently concluded 4th Cassava Conference and Meeting of TAAT Compact Leaders in the Republic of Benin.
The AfDB has pledged to invest $120 million over the next three years to boost productivity and transform nine commodities in Africa which include cassava, rice, maize, sorghum/millet, wheat, livestock, aquaculture, high iron beans and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes.
The transformation of these nine commodities will be achieved through TAAT, a key platform for driving the Feed Africa strategy of the AfDB.
Abdulhameed added that the partnership would also work on how to make appropriate, good quality fertilizer available to farmers.
He stated that the greatest challenge of fertilizer in the country was not the question of manufacturing but the supply at the downstream, especially to farmers in rural communities.
The NIRSAL CEO noted that the downstream supply chain was unregulated, saying, “the farmer is there at the end of the chain, the manufacturer or the importer is there at the other end of the chain but what happens between the farmers and manufacturers has been the major challenge.
“The logistics system has to be controlled, the quality control parameters have to be applied even during goods in transit and the good thing we do in NIRSAL is that we bring all the parties together- from the farmers, transporters, insurance companies and manufacturers- around the table because we create financing for them.
“Therefore we impose rules that say nobody should tamper with the bag of fertilizer, nobody should adulterate the fertilizer and we are going to enable the farmers to know whether the stitches on those bags have been tampered with.”
Martin Fregene, Director of Agriculture and Agro- Industry Department of the AfDB, said rural poverty and high cost of food in Africa were basically due the low productivity of key staples.
He explained that Feed Africa would bring the farmers and technology together in order to achieve the high yield objective of the programme.
“It would increase yield and thus increase income of rural farmers”, he said.
Kenton Dashiell of the IITA said that his organization would coordinate all the research institutes that would bring their skills and specialties on crops and animal value chains targeted to transform agriculture in Nigeria.
