From Noah Ocheni, Abuja
The three tiers of governments have been charged to commits 10%. of their annual budget to the agriculture sector required to support 6% growth rate for the sector as postulated in the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP), framework.
The country Director ActionAid Nigeria, Mrs. Ene Obi’ on Wednesday in Abuja gave the charge in her welcome address at Dialogue & Dissemination on Nigeria’s Performance at the 3rd Biennial Review Exercise on the Implementation of the CAADP held at Hawthorn Suites, Abuja.
This according to her would make Nigeria to be on track in meeting the 2014 Malabo Declaration Commitments, expressing commitment towards data collection to add value in the country agriculture performance reporting template.
“We had a space within the agenda of the National organised by FMARD where we presented the data/information that reflected the lived realities of smallholder women farmers across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to add value in the country performance reporting.” Obi added.
She pointed out that ActioAid Nigeria organised the dialogue in collaboration with Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) to disseminate the report of Nigeria’s performance in the 3rd Biennial Review Process to stakeholders.
Inorder to have a better preparation and improve the process of the 4th Biennial Review cycle, the country Director said conversations around the successes and challenges encountered with the 3rd Biennial Reviewed would be looked into.
“During the 3rd Biennial Review Process, ActionAid was to train smallholder women farmers, Activista, Partners and other CSOs on the use of the Non-State Actors (NSAs) Value Addition Biennial Review Toolkit (VABKIT) and supported them to generate smallholder women farmers’ state level data.”
This according to her was necessary so as to feed into the Report for Nigeria for the 3rd Biennial Review (BR) Exercise on the Implementation of Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP).
“The data/information we collected through the VABKIT that reflected the lived realities of smallholder women farmers across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) shows their accessibility to facilities.”
Ene Obi further disclosed that smallholder women farmers currently have only 18% access to processing facilities, 16.60% access to storage facilities, 13.50% access to off-takers/access to markets, 9.60% access to transportation for agricultural produce, and 42.30% access to trainings.
The country Director therefore stressed the need for government investments to focus on strategic areas of Extension Services, Access to Credit, Women in Agriculture, Youth in Agriculture, Appropriate Labour-Saving Technologies, Inputs, Post-Harvest Losses Reduction Supports (processing facilities and storage facilities.
“While government is making effort to improve the space for more Public Private Partnerships arrangements in Nigeria’s agriculture sector, smallholder women farmers’ access to such schemes across the country remains below 27%.”/ She added.
