Pre-BR3 release: Nigeria needs massive investment in agriculture - NaijaAgroNet

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As the continent prepares to welcome the third biennial review (BR) report by the African heads of government, Nigeria has been urged to invest massively in agriculture, reports NaijaAgroNet

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The Non-State Actors (NSA) who spoke at the just ended pre-3rd Biennial Review (BR) exercise on the implementation of Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) in Abuja at the weekend hosted by a consortium led by Action Aid, enjoined Nigeria to leverage the fact that Mr President, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, retired, has signed the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA) to boost her investment in agriculture.
One of the stakeholders, and Programme Coordinator for Food & Agriculture at Action Aid Nigeria, Mr. Azubike Nwokoye who spoke on “Role of NSAs in the BR process - Case study of AAN and partners” said the signing of AfCFTA deal offers Nigerian an unprecedented investment in the agriculture sector for domestic consumption.

In addition, he said, AfCFTA offers Nigeria the opportunity to leverage rural infrastructural development, and export promotion.

“… For Nigeria to take advantage of the opportunities it offers,” he declared.

Equally, Nwokoye said that the states and federal government should use the agriculture sector to remove Nigeria from the global list as the poverty capital of the world.

“The agricultural sector is the only sector that can adequately provide the needed jobs for our teeming population,” he said.

He pointed out that as part of the process of developing these mechanisms, the Kampala workshop was held as a starting point toward strengthening NSAs and smallholder farmers’ engagement and participation in the CAADP Biennial Review Process at country level since May 2017.

“Subsequent to the outputs generated during the Kampala workshop, key qualitative sub-indicators were generated that formed the basis for formulating the tools in the NSA BR Value Addition Toolkit (VABKIT).

“The toolkit was drafted and tested through a training session for NSA actors including smallholder women farmers’ representatives in Addis Ababa Ethiopia in April 2019.

He recalled that the Retouch Africa Consulting (RAI) provided technical expertise to guide NSAs and linked with AUC/NEPAD process to ensure seamless linkage with NSAs VABKIT thereby adding value to main BR process.

“To this end, the NSA BR Toolkit has been fine-tuned and finalized for implementation and also endorsed by the AUC Department of Rural Economy Development and Agricultural (DREA),” he said.

Currently, NaijaAgroNet gathered that countries already using it to inform second BR process include Tanzania, Nigeria, Malawi, to name a few and are already in the process of piloting the toolkit.