2019: Make family planning political agenda - Salami

NaijaAgroNet: 

The Associate Director, Pathfinder International Nigeria, Dr. Habeeb Salami has tasked the Nigerian media to make family planning a political agenda for the forthcoming general elections in 2019, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Welcoming participants to a three-day Pathfinder’s AFP SMART Advocacy Workshop in Lagos recently urged media practitioners especially in the health sector to ensure that family planning attains agenda status in the next year elections.

“We should let health issues be among campaignable issues as election time is around the corner against 2019,” he charged.

Dr. Salami who lead the Pathfinder’s team on behalf of the Country Director, explained the importance of the workshop for media practitioners, saying its to form a formidable media group that will do a focused-advocacy on family planning.

According to him the overall aim is to achieve an increase in the uptake in Contraceptive Prevalent Rate (CPR) rate by 74 per cent in two-year time, that is, by 2020.

Opportunities, he said, are abound in the media to get policy makers to do the needful, stressing that the current state of “our health indices are too bad for us as a country.”

He also said that there have been calls on why another group is being created because there are other advocacy groups, insisted that “Pathfinder wanted a very focused and evidence-based advocacy.”

The workshop moderated by the Communications Officer at Pathfinder International, Mrs. Somto Atuanya, alongside, Mrs Yemisi and Mrs Edirin Aderemi, while other speakers at the event included Dr. Sidiat Okaga, Dr. Folashade Oludare and Mr. Ayo Adebusoye among others.

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Goal 11: Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable

NaijaAgroNet:

Cities are hubs for ideas, commerce, culture, science, productivity, social development and much more.

At their best, cities have enabled people to advance socially and economically.

However, many challenges exist to maintaining cities in a way that continues to create jobs and prosperity while not straining land and resources.

Common urban challenges include congestion, lack of funds to provide basic services, a shortage of adequate housing and declining infrastructure.

The challenges cities face can be overcome in ways that allow them to continue to thrive and grow, while improving resource use and reducing pollution and poverty. The future we want includes cities of opportunities for all, with access to basic services, energy, housing, transportation and more.

The United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development, took place in Quito, Ecuador from 17-20 October 2016, and was the first UN global summit on urbanization since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Habitat III offered a unique opportunity to discuss the important challenges of how cities, towns, and village can be planned and managed, in order to fulfill their role as drivers of sustainable development, and how they can shape the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals and the Paris Agreement on climate change.

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AfDB urges leaders to make agriculture attractive for young Africans

NaijaAgroNet:

The President of the African Development Bank (AfDB) Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, has urged African leaders to make agriculture attractive for the younger generation, reports NaijaAgroNet.

He was speaking on the occasion of the 2017 World Food Day, AfDB president highlighted how Africa’s food security depends on attracting young people to agriculture and agribusiness. The sector can potentially create wealth and employment for African youth, thereby stemming migration.

World Food Day, celebrated yearly on October 16, promotes worldwide awareness and action for those who suffer from hunger and the need to ensure food security and nutritious diets for all, which this year’s theme focused on the need to ‘Change the future of migration; Invest in food security and rural development’.

The AfDB’s ENABLE Youth programme, which grooming a crop of young agriculturists, is on course to make this happen.

Mahmud Johnson, 26, is the Founder of J-Palm Liberia which works to improve income for Liberia’s smallholder oil palm farmers by 50-80 per cent. He is also creating additional jobs for over 1,000 young people to work as sales representatives for his products.

“Despite the tremendous odds, we (African youth) are determined to maximize our abundant agricultural resources to create wealth, jobs, and socioeconomic opportunities in our countries and across the continent. We need our stakeholders to view us as serious partners in Africa’s transformation, and to work with us to expand our enterprises,” Mahmud said.

Mahmud and some of his employees have benefited from capacity building programs under the AfDB’s Empowering Novel Agri-Business-Led Employment for Youth initiative.

Like Mahmud, many African youth are passionate about staying back on the continent to create wealth and employment, if given the tools and opportunities to put their skills to use. Under the ENABLE Youth program, the Bank is working with the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) to develop a new generation of young commercial farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs.

“Our goal is to develop 10,000 such young agricultural entrepreneurs per country in the next 10 years. In 2016, the Bank provided US $700 million to support this program in eight countries and we've got requests now from 33 countries,” said Adesina.

The Bank considers investment in agriculture as key to making Africa youths prosperous, thereby stemming the tide of migration.

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