Nigeria's Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the World Bank Group and partners including the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) have launched the Nigeria AgriConnect Compact in Ibadan, a national framework to grow the farm sector, create jobs and improve food and nutrition security across priority value chains.

The Compact plans to mobilise an estimated $5 billion over five years from government, donors and the private sector for smallholder productivity, policy reform and farmers' access to credit, insurance and blended finance. Its targets by 2031 include better food and nutrition security for nearly three million people, 2.56 million jobs, 30 percent higher average yields for rice, maize and wheat, 35 percent for cassava, and higher productivity in cattle, small ruminants, pigs and poultry.

Agriculture provides 26 percent of Nigeria's GDP and about 30 percent of jobs, but productivity lags regional peers, about half of its 37 million hectares of arable land is underused, and more than 31 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity. "IFAD brings a distinct contribution to AgriConnect by working with smallholder farmers at the first mile of food systems," said country director Mohamed El-Ghazaly. IFAD's current Nigeria portfolio totals close to $392 million.

AgriConnect is a World Bank initiative to move smallholders from subsistence to surplus, backed by a Bank pledge to double annual agriculture financing to $9 billion; partners include the African Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, Bayer and Google.

Photo: Nescopio / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Source: IFAD