Kaduna: AGRA Holds Gender Consortium Meeting, Distributes Smart Phones to CPAs

Kaduna: AGRA Holds Gender Consortium Meeting, Distributes Smart Phones to CPAs

Zainab Tanimu

Kaduna, Northwest Nigeria

Dr. Esther Ibrahim is the programme Officer, AGRA.

In this brief interview with Zainab Tanimu of Newsreservoir, she gives an overview of some of the activities of AGRA vis – a – vis its gender inclusiveness.

Excerpts

“AGRA is an organization with a vision of transferring our cultural input systems in countries in Africa. It exists in over 15 countries including Nigeria.

“Nigeria is one of the countries in the West African region. We have four countries in the West African region and two are still coming on board.

“What we do is to work with farmers. Build the capacity of the actors. Both state and non state actors to ensure that they are resilience and then competitive in the agric sectors working with the government, and private sector partners.

“The farmers are our partners, so also   every other persons who are in the agricultural ecosystem landscape with whom together we improve farmers livelihood, reduce food insecurity and also improve on nutrition security.

“We work through all these systems to ensure that we have things in place so that Nigeria can feed itself and Africa can also feed itself.”

On the issue of inclusion and how the AGRA Gender Consortium programme came on board, she said.

“We are deliberate to ensure that we integrate women on board so we came up with AGRA Gender Consortium where we can deal directly with women.

“We are sensitive to inclusion that nobody is left behind so that equity is ensured and the gender issue is captured in agriculture. We have women, we have persons with disabilities. We have the young people, the youth, male and female in our programme.

“As we were implementing some of our activities we found out from our interactions with some women farmers that they do not have a voice. That they have limited access to land and other productive resources. So we had to discuss with partners and stakeholders to see how we can help.

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Explaining.

“AGRA revamped its gender and inclusion strategy, to be bold, ambitious, and more intentional in its approaches towards gender and inclusive agriculture transformation.

All their activities she explained are in line with existing government policies.

“We are building all these on the policies that we have existing in Nigeria. We have the gender agric. policy, and we also have the national gender policy. The agric. policy, we are domesticating in the states where we work. We are building on that and we are having trust that women, youth, people with disabilities are catered for in all interventions so that they can also play their roles in the economic development of the nation.

Explaining further, Dr. Esther said.

“This programme targets fifty thousand women and we are working along the value chain.

“We are working in two states. Kaduna and Niger state. What we have been able to do successfully is to reach out to 56,800 women with capacity building, with training in different forms along the value chain. We have been able to reach out  to about 27,000 with inputs working on about 12, 500 hectares of land just to show them that yes, they can actually contribute to food production in the country.

“The women are able to organize themselves in group, go to the company and buy seeds. They can pay outrightly even expanding from the little farm they have to getting more lands so that they can grow more.

“They are adding value. So, we as an organization see inclusion as something very important for us.

Like Asibi  from sabon Gari local government, Kaduna who told us her story of how she has improved her yields and nutrition. She is focusing on the use of Pro vitamin A maize which is nutritious and she talked about the different partners that this programme has helped her to link out to.

“These are the things that she eats in her house. She is like an ambassador,  ensuring that we eat nutritious food in our homes and it is now a business for them.

To further broaden the farmers knowledge, presentations were made highlighting recorded successes and grey areas which paved way for a robust discussion.

This programme was conceptualized in 2021 but came on board, January, 2022. and will come to an end in December, 2024. She added.

To close the yield gap in agriculture

women and the young people must be given the opportunity to contribute Dr. Esther said. Not only will it help in increasing food production but also reduce crime rates in the society.

“We will have food and yield gap closed. Businesses striving in agriculture sector and there will be employment for the young people. This will help in reducing the vices in our different communities.”

AGRA cannot do it all alone thus, into partnership with agencies and development partners.

The programme is funded by AGRA and

Value Seeds Limited is one of the collaborators, one of the players in the ecosystem of agriculture.

The paper presentations from resource persons further highlighted recorded successes and grey areas needing attentions.

Group Head, Finance and Administration, Value Seeds Limited, George Kabutha who was present at the Gender Consortium meeting spoke on some of their achievements.

George Kabutha while appreciating the the good work of AGRA charged the women farmers to be more proactive in order to enjoy the gains of the project.

Food Security is a big activity. The project has been able to bring women farmers together as groups . This has given them the opportunity to access quality inputs and also educate them on the importance of not only using quality fertilizer but also buying the right seeds.

Any activity of farming starts with the right seeds because once you use the right seeds, the yield will increase.

And when the yield increases, we are also talking about income.

“So far so good, we have been able to achieve more than 75% of what we targeted and l know by the end of this year we will be able to empower about 95% small holders farmers. Especially women. Their capacities have improved and they are all in the community.

On the financial facilities, women small holders farmers he explained enjoy credit facilities which helps to enhancing their businesses.

The programme is for everyone including women and they have access to what we call, “input credit”.

Women he said are more responsive in  paying their loans which helps the system in sustaining it credit facilities.

Kabutha however lamented cases where some farmers were given inputs and were not able to pay back and the system collapsed.

On the criteria for assessing inputs he said.

“First and foremost you have to prove your diligence, how long one is in the business, what area is the person into so as to be able to render advise. And the fact that these people belong to a local government, a community, it makes the job easier.

“We have community advisers in each community and  data are kept.

Speaking on the challenges.

“Challenges will always be there, all we need to do is, how to overcome these challenges. When you look at the financial inclusion, is a big challenge because most of these farmers are based in the rural areas and most of the banks do not want to go to these rural areas. All the same we are happy that there are points of sales.

Farmers are encouraged. These farmers will not go far distance to access money. The good thing is that even though they are not given physical cash, they can have bank credit through the bank where they have opened an account since their details already have been taken. That  qualifies them to access such credits.

Individual efforts were recognized and CPAs  of each community parted with a new smart phone each to help ease their businesses.

However, the phones were augmented complement of AGRA.

Before the close of the meeting, commitments were made by stakeholders and development partners present on areas of collaborations.