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OCP Africa Fertiliser Nigeria Limited has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Bank of Agriculture (BoA) and Novus Agro Nigeria Limited to provide finance and inputs for smallholder farmers across the country.
The funding programme is strictly of benefit to farmers who have one hectare of farmland and above, especially farmers’ groups.
Caleb Usoh, country manager, OCP Africa, said that the signing of the agreement was a step further to strengthen its Agribooster Initiative in the South-Western part of the country.
Usoh said that though the Agribooster initiative had been ongoing in Kaduna, Kebbi and Niger states and that the need to expand and impact smallholder farmers in the South-West became imperative.
He said the partnership would address the basic yearnings of smallholder farmers ranging from funds, inputs and access to market to boost productivity.
“We have a lot of farmers doing wonderful things but the major thing they need is support from organisations structured to bring the desired support and that is what brought about the Agribooster project.
“We are partnering with organisations who have access to the farmers and will serve as off-takers of the produce from farmers and that is where Novus Agro will come in,’’ Usoh said.
He also expressed excitement over the restructuring of the BoA which had further positioned the bank as a strategic partner to achieve the mission of reaching more smallholder farmers across the country.
Olabode Abiloye, executive director -wholesale banking south, BoA, said that the bank identified with partners that met its primary objective to impact smallholder farmers and the rural economy.
Abiloye also noted that the partnership was a hinge on the Federal Government partnership with the Kingdom of Morocco.
“We are partnering with OCP Africa and what we intend to gain is expertise and support from the Kingdom of Morocco in those areas where they are much more advanced than we are, particularly in agriculture.
“We are happy about this signing ceremony today because it begins to take all that we have discussed verbally out of the room of conversation to the room of practice.’’
Abiloye said that once the South-West pilot was done, the lessons learnt would be improved upon, while the partnership worked out modalities to expand to make the project a national initiative.
He also assured farmers of supply of quality fertiliser and other agricultural inputs.
Chike Nwagwe, chief executive officer of Novus Agro Nigeria Limited, said that the partnership would enable end-to-end solutions to the problems smallholder farmers faced.
Nwagwe also foresaw that the partnership would boom into so many facets of the country’s agriculture sector and economy at large.
“Novus agro on its part has always worked with smallholder farmers and one of our tag lines has always been linking farmers to the market, whether upstream market or downstream produce market,” he said.
“The biggest thing happening now is that we are talking about a cooperation that will see an end-to-end solution for the problems farmers face right from sourcing finance to getting inputs and sourcing the knowledge required to use those inputs,” he added.
Josephine Okojie
