Abx World Nigeria Limited, a working partner of the Global Good Agricultural Practice (GAP), has launched a solar powered farmers’ mart equipped with freezers and refrigerator with embedded interactive mobile application using the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.
The farmers’ mart will revolutionalise the country’s agricultural supply chain and address the issue of postharvest losses in fresh fruits and vegetables. The solar powered mart which is called the Abxworld Farmers Market can be strategically deployed in streets across the country.
John Okakpu, managing director and chief executive officer, ABX World, disclosed this to journalist during the Food West Africa event held in Lagos recently. He stated that the project which will soon enter large scale implementations is a good initiative to create a vibrant IoT ecosystem full of opportunities and benefits for farmers and end users.
The project pioneers have provided insights into a manifold of dimensions that are relevant for medium-term market deployment, such as economic conditions, technical feasibility, farmer adoption, industrial value for key players, consumers and society expectations, and scalability of the solutions to meet immediate environmental sanitation.
According to Okakpu, with 82 million hectares of arable and over 70 million estimated farmers in the country, Nigeria has no reason for the high rate of unemployment.
“The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) report that one third (1/3) of the global agricultural produce which roughly stands at an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted annually and mainly because such foods are simply not available at the locations where they are badly needed. We want to ensure this is eliminated in Nigeria through abxworld’s famers’ market,” he said.
“Through the app integrated to the freezer and refrigerator it will enable easy for monitoring. There are a number of innovations and opportunities this project will create, particularly in creating employment. Nigeria has no reason being poor,” Okakpu added.
The managing director assured that states will also benefit from the scheme as they are targeting 50-100 tons per state daily when fully implemented.
“We will also keep the state clean through the program under Global GAP,” he said, adding that the farmers’ market can easily be mounted and dismounted at any location while the farm products are hygienically packaged for the consumer.
Okakpu further charged Government at different levels to speed up processes for training of local farmers in line with modern trends while assisting them to export their products.
This, he said, is a sure way to grow the economy especially the foreign exchange market.
Josephine Okojie
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