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    Friday, June 29, 2018

    NIRSAL, AfDB, IITA Embrace Technology to Transform Agriculture

    The Nigerian Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending has entered into a partnership with the African Development Bank and the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture to use technological advancement to transform Nigeria’s agricultural sector.
    This is expected to reduce prices of food items for consumers and increase incomes for smallholder farmers in rural areas of the country.

    The move is part of efforts aimed at creating a plan for agricultural transformation in Africa through the adoption of regional and home-grown technologies.
    The Managing Director, NIRSAL, Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed; Director, Agriculture and Agro-Industry, AfDB, Dr Martin Fregene; and Deputy Director-General, Partnerships for Delivery, IITA, Dr Kenton Dashiell, met on Thursday with stakeholders to discuss modalities for the implementation of the new initiative.

    Also present at the meeting were top officials of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation and industry experts from various countries in Africa.
    The meeting was the outcome of the recently concluded 4th Cassava Conference and meeting of TAAT Compact Leaders in the Republic of Benin.
    The AfDB had pledged to invest $120m over the next three years to boost productivity and transform nine commodities on the continent.
    The commodities are cassava, rice, maize, sorghum/millet, wheat, livestock, aquaculture, high iron beans and orange-fleshed sweet potatoes.

    The transformation of the commodities will be achieved through the TAAT, a key platform for driving the Feed Africa strategy of the AfDB.
    Speaking on the sidelines of the meeting, the NIRSAL MD said the partnership would help to facilitate the adoption and delivery of effective technology to millions of Nigerian farmers in a sustainable manner.
    Abdulhameed stated, “One of the objectives of this partnership with the IITA and the AfDB through the TAAT programme is to support the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme given by the Central bank of Nigeria. The ABP is a massively successful programme of the Federal Government.”

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