The challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine have precipitated and accentuated the food insecurity facing Nigeria and many parts of Africa and the urgent to tackle the looming food crisis with a resilient technology that will boost Climate-Smart Agriculture.
This was part of the focus when the Nigerian Agribusiness Group (NABG) and major stakeholders in the agriculture sub sector took steps to adopt standards for Nigeria’s agricultural commodities in order to ensure that the quality of products meet the standards of the global market.
The one-day stakeholder’s consultative workshop tagged: “Unlocking Our Agri-Commodity Market, Setting the Appropriate Value for Nigeria’s Agri-Produce Exports,” was held in Abuja on Tuesday, September 20, 2022.
The programme was powered by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to support Nigerian Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) with capacity and technical competence to produce safe food and to also make their products more competitive globally.
The fulcrum of this discussion according to the director-general of NABG, Dr. Manzo Maigari, is to employ technology to change the practices of small holder farmers to increase their yields with minimum efforts that is environment-friendly as well as to meet specifications for global standards.
About 41 million people are said to be facing severe food shortage in West Africa and Nigeria is a big victim of this crisis following the displacement of farmers in mainly agricultural plains of the country due to banditry and terrorism. Therefore, this technology could transform agriculture and forestall the threat of hunger among a growing population.
The climate-smart technology focuses on affordable irrigation technique and improved access to inputs. This integrated approach also manages landscapes, cropland, livestock, forest and fisheries to address the interlinked challenges of climate change as well as develop a national agricultural commodity standards grading system and national policy to support commodity grading system.
Nigeria lags behind as its agri-commodities have not been competitive in the global market despite the huge potential in the country. It has become necessary to build standards, following the persistent rejection of Nigerian products in the global market because they don’t meet specifications and at the heart of this push is the deployment of technology to drive the Nigerian agribusiness.
“In modern business and trade, people want to be sure of the quality of goods you produce, the sanitation, and the hygiene of what you are selling. If we want to play in the global scene then we must comply with the global best practices and align ourselves to global benchmarks and standards.
“This is something that does not exist currently in Nigeria and therefore as custodians of agribusiness in Nigeria, we have taken the initiative to bring stakeholders together both in the public and private sector, so that we can craft a policy that will enable Nigeria compete favorably in Africa and across the world,” Maigari said.
Contributing, the executive secretary, Nigeria’s National Action Committee on African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) Francis Anatogu, told reporters that the policy framework will help to focus on what the nation needs to do to make sure that the objective is achieved.
He also emphasised that the institutions or entities that will implement the policy should be backed by law to make it sustainable.
Stella Oraka the CEO of Agribusiness Innovation (AGRICON) said the idea is for Nigerians to produce what they eat and sell what they produce. She also called for the empowerment of the Small Medium Enterprises to produce safe food to make it available for the masses and to be able to export the same.
“The SMEs have been very poor; they have not been able to produce what they even eat, not to talk of exporting. The NABG are trying to ensure that the SMEs are given the opportunity to produce safe food and to export and we are here to support them,” she said.
Nigeria needs huge investment in agriculture technology if it must remove more Nigerians from poverty. But how much that is required for this huge project may go beyond the meagre budgetary provisions for agriculture in Nigeria.
