Search NaijaAgroNet

Showing posts with label rural areas. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rural areas. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 6, 2015

African youths advised to take advantage of rural areas



The over 40 per cent of African population living in the rural areas, especially the youths, have been advised to take advantage of their environment by turning it into opportunities, reports NaijaAgroNet.

Head of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CADDP), Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu gave this advice in a chat with NaijaAgroNet at the on-going five-day inaugural meeting of Specialized Technical Committee (STC) on Agriculture, Rural Development, Water and Environment in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

He said, African youth are the backbone of everything  the continent has been trying to do with promising future which must be discovered for them to be able to claim it.

Also, he admonished the youth to desist from having the notion that only those living in the cities or urban areas could be successful in life.

“We have to stop moving from rural areas and increasing the number of people living in shanty towns in the cities,” he decried, adding that the expected transformation through agriculture could be achieved by the youth taking the bull by the horn and charting a new course for themselves via taking advantage of their rural environment.

“I believe in reversal of goals. Let the youth stay in the village where the possibility to create sustainable livelihood system for themselves and their families are possible through farming,” he said.

Dr. Yamdjeu underlined the need for member nations of the African Union to invest more in rural transformation and territorial development by way of reducing rural-urban migration. 

For him, CADDP through its Rural Futures; a framework that promotes transformation of rural areas in continent, already have thoughts on this, saying, for various African regions to be successful in agriculture, every factors militating against the sector must be brought to the table with solution proposed.

 “If indeed we have to encourage the youth into embracing agriculture, then rural areas have to be provided the opportunities that people are looking for in the towns, ranging from basic social services to agricultural financing,” Dr. Yamdjeu counseled.
  
+Remmy Nweke (ITRealms) in Addis Ababa

... Linking agrobiz, sustainable environs, people & technology
Pix: Dr. Augustin Wambo Yamdjeu

Tuesday, October 1, 2013

USPF connects rural Nigeria to agriculture


Anthony Nwakaegho/NaijaAgroNet

The Ministry of Communication Technology (Commtech) has expressed its commitment on the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) to really spend 80 per cent of fund to building or subsidising connectivity to the rural areas in order to boost agriculture in Nigeria.

The Minister of CommTech, Mrs Omobola Johnson gave this expose while addressing stakeholders in the Information Communication Technology (ICT) and Agriculture Sectors recently in Abuja and said that with the number of programs that have been conceptualised prior to the creation of the ministry, the Mobile phone Expansion BTS program is being accelerated to create the desired impact in the sectors.

According to her, the Rural Broadband Initiative (RUBI) is providing wholesale internet bandwidth to all its cyber cafes, Community Communication Centres, and ICT centres in the rural areas at a subsidised rate to ensure that people have access to internet.

“We’re not just talking about farmers here but anybody that is involved in the business of agriculture, that is farmers, traders, agro-preneurs, extension workers, policy makers, buyers among others and what we need to do to bridge that gap is to take the information that is here and transform it to a way that is relevant, convenient and useful for these stakeholders to develop their businesses.


"We’ve established an IT Innovation Fund; first venture capital fund solely focused on ICT businesses and we’ll be putting this in the seed capital in the next couple of months. But the idea of these funds is to support these entrepreneurs as we focus on agriculture in the coming months, working in partnership with United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Nigeria Expanded Trade and Transport (NEXTT) Programme that is looking at agriculture. They are going to be giving us ideas of the needs of this particular program and how they’re going to support and they’re also going to put some vent capital funds,” Johnson said.



NaijaAgroNet recorded that there is collaboration between the Ministry of Agriculture, Trade and Investment and Ministry of Communication Technology and Finance to deliver the first online Commodities Exchange, as the Abuja Securities and Commodities Exchange have been transformed into an online trading platform for commodities.

NaijaAgroNet
.. Linking agrobiz, people & technology
pix: Minister of CommTech, Mrs Omobola Johnson