That scares right? Nigeria Governments at Federal and State levels are desirous of feeding its exploding population and earn from export.
But all that may still equal zero despite hundreds of Billions of Naira Government has plunged into agriculture through NIRSAL/CBN.
Have you wondered why despite all the intervention policies, prices of food are skyrocketing and shortage of food still persist? The answer is simple. Government is facing only a side of what needs to be done. We’re just scratching around the solutions. We’ve not fully delved into the solutions proper.
Perennially, our interventions have been that of brigade-approach without proper and result-oriented planning. We are trying to grow AGRIC sector without efforts at growing the technology that drives the desired growth.
I’m awed at how much India is leveraging technology to solve most of its problems. We just tidied up a two-week training on Disruptive Agri-Tech Initiatives, sponsored by African Asian Rural Development Organization New Delhi and National Institute for Micro Small and Medium Enterprises NiMSME Hyderabad.
It was 8 days of interactive session with presentation from some of the best tech-companies in India. Today, you can have a clue of what the next farming season looks like vis-a-vis the soil texture, weather condition, your farm vulnerability in terms of pest and bacterial attack and what the yield will look like even before you till the ground.
There are other simple technology in form of Apps that can increase growth by over 40%. Indian rural farmers are becoming players in the international market and export. All thanks to disruptive Agri-Tech and many interventions by the Indian Government. Agric sector contributes over 21% of Indian export of these AGRIC produce are coming from rural farmers in India.
In Nigeria, the Government is doing great in supporting farmers with low interest loans ans other forms of intervention policies. But Government intervention in Agri-Tech is almost zero. Most of the start-ups in Agri-Tech are private sector driven and they’re walking okay silken soft thread, all by themselves.
21st century is a technology-driven century. Billions of Dollars intervention in agric will equate nothing if there’s no technology driving growth in AGRIC sector.