PHSAI advocacy boosts FP funding in Lagos - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet: 

The Public Health Sustainable Advocacy Initiative (PHSAI) has declared that its efforts gave boost to the family planning (FP) funding in Lagos State, reports NaijaAgroNet.

PHSAI chairman, Mr. Ayo Adebusoye made this disclosure in his address to mark the 2019 World Contraception Day with the support of Pathfinder International under the theme: FP Funding Advocacy Overview in Lagos State.

According to him, the Lagos State Family Planning (FP) Advocacy Working Group (LAWG) known formally as the Public Health Sustainable Advocacy Initiative (PHSAI) was established in January 2015 with the support of Pathfinder International.

PHSAI, he said, comprises civil society, faith-based organizations, the media, and local government units for budget and reproductive health and family planning.

As said by Adebusoye, between 2015 and 2018, PHSAI efforts is beginning to manifest through series of meetings with the key stakeholders in Lagos State, including policy makers in the health sector, local government executives, community leaders and Reproductive Health and Family Planning Managers among others.

The essence of these meetings, he said, was to identify ways to leverage funds for Family Planning.

As such, he disclosed that presently, some 18 Local Government Areas cum Local Council Development Authorities “are now reported to be funding family planning consumables in 2018.”

In addition, he said that Lagos State budget for family planning doubled “from N86,740,000 ($240,944.44) in 2017 to N177,500,000 ($493,055.56) in 2018.”

In 2017, for instance, he said, the Lagos State Primary Healthcare Board for the first time in history “created a specific budget line for family planning consumables in the sum N50,000,000 ($140,000). The same amount was allocated in the 2018 budget.”

PHSAI’s advocacy intervention, he said, is to improve family planning funding, reiterating the group committed to scaling up the lessons learnt by sharing with the state and local governments throughout Nigeria.





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Improve nutrition funding in Nigeria says CS-SUNN - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

The Civil Society Scaling-Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS—SUNN), has urged the three tiers of government in the country to make certain adequate budgetary allocations on nutrition activities, reports NaijaAgroNet.

A communiqué issued at end of a 3-day workshop , the Civil Society Organisation (CSO) called on government to ensure adequate and prompt release of the nutrition budgets in order to facilitate necessary provisions for the treatment of drugs for the handling of malnutrition issues ravaging children under 5 years old.

The workshop with the theme; "the journalists' role in ensuring transparency and accountability in allocation and use of health/ nutrition funds in Nigeria", was aimed at building the capacity of media practitioners in reporting issues of nutrition

Endorsed by Salihu Mohammed Alkali and Priscilla Dennis, chairman and secretary of the Communique Committee, respectively, described as unacceptable, the record of over 2000 of children under 5 dying daily as a result of cases of malnutrition.

Participants also decried the daily 145 maternal death as a result of malnutrition, recognising nutrition as multi sectoral issue admonishing all hands on deck to be able to tackle the menace.

Participants noted that preventing malnutrition is better and more cost effective than curing the problem, regretting that any malnourished child will be resistant to immunisation.

They further urged media to promptly and adequately report malnutrition cases in order to effectively tackle the problem.

The workshop was organised by CS-- SUNN in collaboration with Partnership for Improving Nigeria Nutrition Systems, PINNS.

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Public funding can’t end poverty, hunger - NaijaAgroNet

NaijaAgroNet:

Public funding alone has been identified as not being enough to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and development even as international financing institutions must collaborate more strategically to leverage private investments, reports NaijaAgroNet.

This was the seemingly consensus of over 200 investors, business leaders, representatives from multilateral development institutions, and policy-makers and government officials from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas in attendance at 2018 Global Forum.

NaijaAgroNet reports that the Forum supported by the European Union and organized by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), estimates that incremental resources of up to USD 265 billion a year are needed to end poverty and hunger by 2030. This is 0.3 per cent of the average projected world income for the period.

"With the 2030 deadline approaching fast, development and international financial institutions must work together with the private sector to find durable solutions to major development challenges such as poverty, climate change and migration. That means creating environments where innovation can flourish and where private investors have incentives to contribute to inclusive economic growth and environmental sustainability," said EBRD's President Sir Suma Chakrabarti.

Food and agriculture systems face daunting challenges - from having to produce more with less to feed a growing planet, to shrinking the sector's carbon footprint, to creating decent employment opportunities, especially for youth in developing countries.

"FAO is custodian of 21 of the SDG's indicators, and can play a key role in helping the private sector to shape and monitor their contributions to these sustainability goals. We are also committed to promoting more enabling environments for private investment in sustainable agrifood systems, while also making sure those finances reach where they are needed most," FAO's Deputy Director-GeneralDaniel Gustafson said.

"One encouraging trend - already visible in the agriculture sector - is impact investing, in which private investors are investing in initiatives that generate profits as well as social and environmental impacts," Gustafson added.

According to a survey by the Global Impact Investment Network, the world's leading impact investors collectively manage over USD 228 billion in impact assets. That is more than the amount of public funding available in 2017 through official development assistance.

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Lagos PHSAI boss demands more funding for family planning

NaijaAgroNet:

The Lagos State chairman of the Public Health Sustainable Advocacy Initiative (PHSAI), Mr. Ayo Adebusoye has demanded more funding for the family planning activities and campaigns in the centre of excellence, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Speaking on the interventions by the Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) on family planning, at a three-day Pathfinder’s AFP SMART Media Advocacy Workshop in Lagos, recently, Mr. Adebusoye while giving the Lagos State Family Planning (FP) Status, highlighted some of the challenges faced by PHSAI with top on being lack of funding.

He stressed the need to monitor budget, saying that “if you don't know what was budgeted, how can you monitor or follow up,” insisting that non release of fund for FP is a factor hindering the achievement of FP2020 goals and advocated for more funding.

Also, he mentioned that population growth rate which is at about 3.2 per cent, Total Fertility Rate (TFR) stood at about four births per women.

He decried what is at stake and how low adoption is affecting Maternal Mortality Rate (MMR). MMR is highest among the poor. Lagos state goal overall CPR of 74% by 2020 and the purpose is to avert 2.6 million unintended pregnancies and 8000 maternal life saved.

Mr Adebusoye similarly talked about the background and objectives of PHSAI as well as the activities of the group.

He talked about how the agenda and FP budget tracking indicators, disbursement and expenditure will be focused on in this New Year, 2018; expressing confidence that PHSAI was fundamentally established to work closely with FB Media Advocacy Working Group.

The workshop was organised by Pathfinder International Nigeria with some international partners.

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Northeast: FAO seeks $10m funding to assist 385,000 Nigerians with farming support

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organisaiton (FAO) has said its seeking funding to the tune of $10 million to provide emergency agricultural support to internally displaced people and host families, reports NaijaAgroNet.

FAO told NaijaAgroNet that urgent action is needed to provide farming and livelihood support to 385,000 people in parts of Nigeria's northeast where food insecurity is rampant.

As said by FAO in a press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, the resumption of agricultural activities in these areas is of utmost priority to ensure that people can produce enough food for themselves.

FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Africa, Bukar Tijani, said “This includes those who have been internally displaced by the conflict as well as communities who have been hosting them.”

These populations, Tijani noted, need urgent assistance to recover their livelihoods, which are mostly based on crop farming, artisanal fisheries and aquaculture and livestock production, stressing that for the last three to four years this has not been possible due to the conflict.

As at press time, over 3 million people are affected by acute food insecurity in Borno, Yobe and Adamawa States.

The FAO's Emergency and Response Manager in Nigeria, Tim Vaessen, revealed that FAO has launched a full-scale corporate response to the ongoing crisis and urgently requires $10 million to supply seeds, fertilizers and irrigation equipment for the upcoming irrigated dry season.

Meanwhile, he said, FAO is preparing its response for the main agricultural season for which even more resources are required.

"This year, significant territory previously controlled by Boko Haram has been rendered accessible to humanitarian assistance so we have a critical opportunity to tackle the alarming levels of food insecurity in northeast Nigeria," Vaessen said.

He explained that with funds received to-date, FAO has reached over 123,000 people to improve their food security by enabling them to grow their own food during the ongoing rain-fed season.

While this assistance is crucial, FAO said it reached just a fraction of those in need of support and now is seeking funds to support irrigated crop production, livestock restocking and animal health treatment, including disease control and supplementary feed, in the newly liberated areas. ##

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Pix: FAO/Sonia Nguyen … A displaced farmer preparing land for planting in Kukarata, northeastern Nigeria.

FAO, WFP require $169m to save CAR from drought

NaijaAgroNet:

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme (WFP) have cried out for lack of $169m funding for the ‘seed protection’ programme going-on in the Central African Republic (CAR) to be successful, reports NaijaAgroNet.

In a joint press statement made available to NaijaAgroNet, WFP noted it requires US$83 million to respond to the urgent needs of 1.4 million people in CAR and in neighbouring countries hosting Central African Republic refugees, while the FAO is appealing for US$86 million to support 1.55 million people with inputs to produce crops and keep their livestock healthy, in order to boost food security.

The programme,NaijaAgroNet gathered, is currently being funded by governments of Belgium, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom and United States, as well as the African Development Bank, the European Union and ECHO, the FondsBêkou, the United Nations Central Emergency Response Fund, the Common Humanitarian Fund for the Central African Republic, UN Women, and World Bank, yet only half of the estimated number of beneficiaries could receive support based on available fund.

NaijaAgroNet also reports that with 75 percent of the population depending on agriculture, FAO, WFP and their partners have been working together since the beginning of the unrest to mitigate negative impacts on agricultural production and food security.

The programme which involves provision of seeds, hand tools and food to nearly 50,000 hungry farming families in the most food-insecure areas of the Central African Republic (CAR) in a bid to make sure families do not survive with the current scarcity by eating the seeds meant for planting.

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Mainstreet Bank commits N10bn to fertiliser distribution

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Mainstreet Bank plc has committed N10 billion to the funding of fertiliser distribution through agro dealers in Nigeria to complement the federal government’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda, NaijaAgroNet reports.

The Managing Director, Mainstreet Bank, Faith Tuedor-Matthews disclosed this to NaijaAgroNet at the 2013 Nigerian Economic Summit (NES) held in Abuja recently, revealing the bank’s successful intervention in the procurement and distribution of fertiliser had impacted about one million real farmers in Nigeria.

She said that her institution was developing a project initiative in partnership with willing state governments to support funding of primary production activities in some key crops, following the success achieved through the federal government’s Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS).

The Mainstreet Bank boss acknowledged that GESS had been supportive of small farmers who are the ultimate drivers of food production and agricultural development in Nigeria.

Commenting on the use of seed production chain to boost the success of GESS, she said that there are four critical steps which all stakeholders should embrace, which includes: the need for greater investment in Research and Development (R&D) in the seeds sector, quality control of the seeds to ensure standards, deliberate branding of the seeds to achieve market differentiation as well as investing greater effort on general awareness.

She canvassed that government, seed companies, farmers and the researchers to work together to improve the quality of hybrid seeds available to farmers and  crops such as rice, sorghum, cassava, cotton, soya beans, and Maize should be provided to the small farmers who have major buyers or Agro processors.

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