Federal Government is to benefit from World Bank’s credit to support its agricultural productivity and address post-harvest losses.
This is as the World Bank weekend in Washington DC approved a $200 million credit to further support the Government of Nigeria in its efforts to enhance agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers in participating states.
Rachid Benmessaoud, World Bank country director for Nigeria said in a statement made available to BusinessDay that agriculture was key to long-term economic growth and diversification.
The project supports the country policy thrusts on food security, local production, job creation and economic diversification, Benmessaoud said in the statement. It responds to the recurring issues of low productivity, limited farmers’ participation to agribusiness supply chains, and institutional realignment in the agricultural sector.
The project will help increase agricultural productivity and production, improve processing and marketing, foster job creation, and increase household income and livelihood in participating states. The project, the statement further explained, will benefit women and youth businesses such as horticulture, poultry and aquaculture.
Recall, Audu Ogbeh, Nigeria’s minister of agriculture, had earlier said the Federal Government was prepared to access any form of aid it would from development partners to support the farmers and drive Nigeria’s food sufficiency drive, since the Bank of Agriculture was undergoing recapitalisation.
The statement further noted that the project would tackle the key constraints of the Nigeria agriculture sector, such as low productivity, lack of seed funds for establishing agro-processing plants, lack of access to supportive infrastructure, and low level of technology adoption and limited access to markets.
“Priority value chains under the project will include products with potential for immediate improvement of food security, products with a potential for export and foreign currency earnings (cocoa and cashew) and enhancement of the national production of crops including rice, maize, cassava and wheat,” said El Hadj Adama Toure, lead agriculture specialist at the World Bank.
“The number of project’s direct beneficiaries is 60,000 individuals, 35 percent of which will be women. Overall, about 300,000 farm household members are indirect beneficiaries,” Toure said.
The credit is financed from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank Group’s grant and low-interest arm. It will be on standard IDA terms, with a maturity of 25 years.
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