Professionals and experts in environment and agriculture are being trained in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, South-South Nigeria. They will soon be unleashed into farms and rural areas in Nigeria to fight climate change.
The training was organized by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), an arm of the United Nations, which is working in 59 countries in Africa and Oceania to wage war against hunger and climate change.
The experts are drawn from all the agric projects under the IFAD to cascade the knowledge and strategies garnered from various resource persons from Nigeria and abroad to strengthen the front lines in the fight against climate change.
The training which is termed Cohort 2 comes after the Cohort 1 which ended last week in Port Harcourt targeted at policy level managers.
Addressing the participants at Villa Tuscana Luxe in the GRA 2 zone in the Garden City, the IFAD Country Director for Nigeria, Dede Ekoue, said IFAD is the only international financial institution with a mandate to invest in rural people. “It plays a unique role in transforming food systems working with governments, private sector, development partners and farmers organisations, to deliver greater, more sustainable impacts for small-scale farmers and other key stakeholders involved in food systems.”
She went on: “In line with this unique role of IFAD, the IFAD/ SUSTAIN training programme aims at enhancing the capacity of FGN/IFAD Projects Management Units and Government Agencies to boost agri-food growth through small holder farmers while promoting the successful integration of social climate and environment requirements.”
She said Cohort 1 was made of leaders of projects at the national and state levels who she said successfully leveraged this training to enhance their understanding of the requirements, to Identify strategic areas of actions to further boost compliance with social climate and environment procedures across all FGN-IFAD programmes. In addition, the first cohort committed to continuing the journey of learning through a SECAP community of practice.
Read also: FG, IFAD map out strategies against climate change to save farming
She said Cohort 2 is made of specialists mainly environment and climate specialists, rural infrastructure and irrigation specialists, and gender and youth and rural Institutions experts.
In his contribution, Abiodun Sanni (PhD), an engineer, who is the National Project Coordinator of the Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises Project in the Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) said the timing marks a significant step forward in the collective efforts to ensure that the initiatives they undertook were not only successful but also sustainable and inclusive.
“As we know, Nigeria, and the Niger Delta region in particular, is home to a unique and diverse ecosystem with communities whose livelihoods are intricately linked to the land, water, and natural resources.
Speaking, Paxina Chilleshe-Toe, Regional Technical Lead, Climate and Environment, IFAD OTD, West and Central Africa Division, Ivory Coast, said the training is expected to see how farming activities affect the environment as well as assess opportunities created.
She said the training would also improve agric resources with better integration of environmental management with better climate change mitigation.
On her own, Jenean Pistorius from Clear AA, Centre for Learning and Evaluations and Results in Anglophone Africa, based in Johannesburg, South Africa, said their work is to support what IFAD is doing across Africa, and that they are responsible for capacity strengthening within the monitoring and evaluation systems buildings throughout English speaking Africa.
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