FG earmarks $500m to enhance food security

By Maduabuchi Nmeribeh/Kano

Nigerian government has set aside $500 million to support farmers and enhance food security through the Nigeria’s Sustainable Agricultural Value-Chains for Growth (AGROW) programme.

The programme is anchored and supported by the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit (PFSCU), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS), Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF), and the World Bank Group.

Mr. Eniola Akindele, PFSCU Manager of Data and Input Assessments, hinted this in Kano, on Tuesday, during a one-day Agroecological Zonal Workshop for the Sudan-Savannah states.

Among states which participated in the workshop include Kano, Sokoto, Zamfara, Kebbi, Kaduna, Katsina, Gombe, and Bauchi.

According to him, the AGROW programme was designed to ensure access to loans for farmers, ensure job creation and encourage private-sector investment in the Agricultural sector, with a view to realizing the Renewed Hope Agenda of food security and industrialization.

Akindele described the AGROW as a value-chain programme, being used to tackle the food security problem in the country.

“We must not only look at one side of the value-chain, we must look at the value chain holistically. We follow it up from production, to processing, and even, last to the market and consumption. That is why this programme is coming in, and that is why we are here,” he stated.

Akindele said the programme has opened the window for the stakeholders to brainstorm and deliberate on all the challenges facing agribusiness in the country, with a view to proffering solutions for them and the tackle the problem of food insecurity headlong.

According to him, the essence of the workshop was to review AGROW programmes in the Sudan-Savannah zone, revalidate initiatives and ensure that whatever action being taken to help farmers in the zone are specific and result-oriented.

He encouraged farmers to believe that the Federal Government is determined to carry them along in policy formation and decisions concerning farmers’ improved productivity.