While the agricultural sector is very important in
Nigeria, it is however still grappling with many challenges including low
yields of key staple crops and livestock, poor market access, lack of inputs
such as improved seeds and fertilizers, among others, Engineer Akeju Olagbaju,
a Director with the Nigerian Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural
Development (FMARD) has said.
Speaking while officiating a stakeholders’
forum from farmers’ organizations, development agencies, donor organizations,
the private sector, private and public extension actors, regional
organizations, research partners in the national program, the media and
policymakers , Engr Olagbaju noted that the country has a large number of
unemployed youth for whom agriculture can be a source of jobs and income.
Despite the challenges, Olagbaju said that
agricultural research holds key to unlocking the bottlenecks, stressing that
the Nigerian government would provide the enabling environment to ensure that
the site integration plans were properly executed in line with the national
development agenda.
The forum orgainsed by the CGIAR centers
working in Nigeria and key representatives of the country’s agriculture
stakeholders aimed at forging close working with each other and at the same
time better align their activities to the national priorities.
Discussions on better integration and the mechanics of
how all important stakeholders could work together at the national level were
held at a two-day meeting in Abuja, Nigeria, 16 – 17 November. The meeting
explored how CGIAR can be better integrated in the country’s agriculture
research for development (R4D) fabric.
The participants looked at the agricultural strategy of
Nigeria, the challenges facing the sector, the national priorities, donors and
funders’ priorities, and CGIAR activities in the country. They discussed
principles and mechanisms that would help guide the development of an
integration framework outlining the collaboration, selection of sites, and
other important areas including monitoring and evaluation, communication,
governance structures. The framework which would lead to the development
of a plan will be used to inform the development of phase 2 of the CGIAR
Research Programs. The meeting was organized by IITA’s Partnership Coordination
Office led by Alfred Dixon.
The President of the Maize Association of Nigeria (MAAN),
Tunji Adenola commended CGIAR for the initiative of site integration,
emphasizing that it would multiply the benefits of research.
“Take for instance, IITA and CIMMYT have been working on
maize, and they have been able to develop improved maize varieties. Site
integration has the potential of scaling up the benefits of these varieties
such that more farmers will have access to these varieties,” he explained.
Also speaking at the meeting, Kenton Dashiell, IITA
Deputy Director General for Partnerships and Capacity Development, noted that
the days of each CGIAR center working alone is long gone. “CGIAR is moving into
a mode of greater collaboration and integration with national, regional, and
international partners within a single location,” he said.
Kwesi Atta-Krah, Director of the CGIAR Research Program
on Integrated System for the Humidtropics spoke on behalf of the Global Forum
on Agricultural Research (GFAR), and the CGIAR Consortium.
He said that the challenge to agricultural development
was huge and demanded collaboration among all stakeholders.
“Our goal is to ensure how best the smallholder farmer in
Nigeria will derive more benefits from research,” Dr Atta-Krah added.
Other speakers at the workshop were Atsuko Toda, from the
International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) on behalf of the
Agriculture Development Partners’ Working Group, and Alfred Dixon who gave an
overview of CGIAR’s presence in Nigeria.
This meeting is the first in a series of meetings on site
integration being organized by CGIAR. The next meeting will take place in Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania on 3-4 December also organized by IITA. Other countries
slated soon include Ghana, Ethiopia, and Kenya, among others.
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