The International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG), have announced a strategic partnership towards the enhancement of agricultural transformation in the country.
The president of the NAGB, Dr Emmanuel Ijewere, said the development would increase the productivity of agro farmers.
Speaking during a courtesy visit to the IITA, Abuja station,informed that his group would work closely with the IITA to translate what had been researched over the years.
He added: “We will take advantage of these people who have come up with a modern way of doing good research after so many years.So we are going to call the various yam farmers, for example, and tell them that this is the new thing. We will put them in groups or clusters; and we shall challenge state governments because there is no farm that does not exist in a local a government.
“The local governments themselves will compete to bring their people together. And we shall work with them to make sure that the knowledge the IITA has brought will be made available to them”.
Also speaking,the head of the Abuja station of the IITA, Professor Lateef Sanni, explained that the partnership was necessary due to the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine and global recession, which have caused scarcity of commodities and hike in prices, leading to food insecurity.
He said, “We take about 11 per cent of wheat from Russia and Ukraine; our annual wheat demand is 6million. The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has supported 800,000 Out of that. There is a huge gap.
“Also, more than 55 per cent comes from Ukraine and Russia, and some fertilisers, especially potash and phosphate. So the essence of this meeting is how to ramp up production.”
In his remarks,the director of development and delivery at the IITA, Dr Alfred Dixon, said Africa imported $35 billion worth of food, stressing that if nothing meaningful was done about it, by 2025 the country would be importing $110billion worth of food.
