Niger State Agricultural Value Chain Development Program (AVDEP) - The National Association of Nigerian Traders NANTS

NANTS was well represented in the just concluded 2 day flagship event held in Niger State in a bid to transform the Niger State agricultural landscape.

The State government through the Ministry of Agriculture initiated a flagship project with support from AGRA. The flagship tagged “Agricultural Value Chain Development” (AVDEP) is focused on policy management, sustainable institutional framework design and implementation through innovative processes that can expedite the development of the State’s agricultural sector..

The focal areas of the AVDEP are to enhance food security through strengthening climate smart seed production systems, improve input availability and distribution mechanisms, explore digital platforms for extension service delivery, increase access to finance, agricultural insurance adoption and market for priority value chains as well as promote professional business development services that increase financial inclusion.

Some of the propositions made and instantly adopted were:
i. The need to increase budgetary allocations for M&E for effective monitoring and quality data gathering for evaluation of projects’ impacts. This led to the suggestion by the Permanent Secretary for a review of the AVDEP M&E Budget from 2% – 10%

ii. The need to synergize activities, define roles and scope based on level of investment of development partners with State activities to ensure widespread implementation of interventions without having to duplicate roles and recycle project beneficiaries. This led to a resolution by the Perm Sec to coordinate monthly review meetings with all development partners working in Niger State.

iii. The need to engage agricultural insurance service providers to device ways of making agricultural insurance attractive for adoption by farmers after having explained the importance of insurance and how it can increase agricultural lending rate among financial institutions. This led to the Permanent Secretary’s immediate directive to the Consultant to include stakeholders engagement for Agricultural Insurance in the final AVDEP document

iv. The need to increase the awareness level of farmers on carbon credit through sensitization fora and trainings to enable smallholder farmers explore the opportunities in it for income generation. This led to the resolution by the Permanent Secretary to conduct training for 100 farmers who will in turn step down the knowledge to their fellow farmers.

It was a 2-day workshop of vigorous brainstorming and cross fertilization of ideas by industry actors and experts, and we look forward to a more robust and inclusive final AVDEP document.