The application of science and technology has no doubt improved the livelihoods of Nigerian farmers. This is a case study of Nigeria Farmer’s E-wallet System, the first in Africa, which is indeed worth of emulation and implementation by other African nations.
In October 2011, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Nigeria under the leadership of the –then- minister, and present President of Africa Development Bank, Dr. Akinwunmi Adesina, introduced one of the largest agriculture transformation programs in the world.
The Problem
The central idea is to bring structure to the historically chaotic inputs distribution system in the agriculture sector by integrating farmers into an ecosystem in which the farmer has access to inputs (fertiliser & improved seeds), finance (credits and loans) , technology (mechanisation) , markets (local buying agents and price stability / transparency mechanisms) and information (weather, pricing cultivation, best practices etc). This ecosystem was designed around what is known as “e-wallet technology and business processes”.
This transformation has to be done because historically the government has always provided subsidized seeds and fertilizers nation-wide. The system relies on government procurement and distribution. The private sector has always tendered for the fertilizer and seed supply, under a massive fertilizer and seed contracting system. The system was found to be fraught with many problems. The government input procurement and distribution system was very inefficient and costly, and suffered from corruption, and displaced private commercial sales of fertilizers.
As a result, only 11% of poor smallholder farmers in Nigeria got the government subsidized inputs. Majority of it ended up on farms from influential figures, or re-sold on the open market at high profit margins, and in neighboring countries. Despite the huge sums spent on fertilizer subsidies, rural poverty continued to rise and fertilizer use was still less than 10 kilograms per hectare, compared to over 100 kg per ha global average. The level of use of improved seed is only 8,000 MT annually, by only 5% of farmers, compared to the potential effective demand of 1 Million Metric tons. MORE
This is a reblog from the FARA Social Reporter's Blog
Blogpost and picture by Abe Oluwayomi Kayode, yommi.abe(at)gmail.com, #AASW7 social reporter.
This post represents the author’s views only.