Business
FG, IFAD Recommend Scaling-Up Commodity Alliance Forum
The Federal Government and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have recommended the scaling-up of commodity alliance forum in all the states of the country.
The recommendation is aimed at enhancing farmers’ access to market as well as transforming the nation’s food system.
They made the recommendation Wednesday in Abuja at the Wrap-up workshop of the FG/IFAD Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) 10th Supervision Mission.
The Country Director, IFAD Nigeria, Dr Dede Ekoue, identified Commodity Alliance Forum (CAF) operational in VCDP implementing states as an effective platform to enhance farmers’ access to market, and strengthening the agro industry.
Ekoue identified CAF’s capacity building for youths and women empowerment as key strength that have propelled VCDP to its current level of excellence across the nine participating states: Ebonyi, Enugu, Taraba, Kogi, Nasarawa, Anambra, Benue, Ogun and Niger.
She explained that VCDP had leveraged on the power of collaboration through CAF, which successfully applied the Public Private-Producer Partnership (4Ps) model, setting an example for effective market-led value chain development, especially in the rice sector.
According to her, the result has been global and regional recognition for VCDP’s effectiveness, notably the recent praises from the Vice President of Nigeria at the UN Food Systems Summit stocktaking in Rome
She therefore recommended youth and women empowerment, adding “We have seen that youths are very happy to have the support of the VCDP and it is helping them to increase their income along the value chain.
“For example, in seed entrepreneur, there are young people that have been trained, we also have youths providing some services like mechanisation to farmers which is very important.
“Women have also shown that they are really happy about the programme because it does not only allow them to have access to input but also work within the community to improve gender equality using household approach called Gender Learning Action System”.
While lauding all participating states for paying their counterpart fund, the Country Director, however, urged all states covered by the programme to pay up their counterpart fund.
Similarly, Mr Bukar Musa, the Director, Programme Coordinating Unit, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAF), said the VCDP’s commitment to capacity building for farmer organisations in both technical and business aspects were remarkable.
Musa said the commitment combined with improved access to production inputs had yielded impressive results.
“We have witnessed a staggering increase in yields with cassava recording a 100 per cent improvement and rice production seeing an incredible 200 per cent increase.
“We have witnessed increased yields, improved livelihoods and enhanced food security as a result of the programme’s interventions. This is a testament to the transformative power of targeted investments in agriculture and value chain development” he said.
He added that the VCDP had played a pivotal role in promoting youth and women entrepreneurship and employment across the entire value chain.
In the same vein, Dr Fatima Aliyu, the National Coordinator FGN/IFAD-VCDP, said the supervision mission examined and assessed the various facets of the VCDP’s implementation, learning from both successes and challenges.
Aliyu said these processes had been valuable in shaping the future direction of the programme and ensuring that “we continue to deliver impactful results.
“The main objective is to access the implementation of the additional financing one and two of the project, assess programme implementation”.