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About 140 farmers, this week, have been signed on to the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) initiative in Gombe state, north eastern Nigeria,
Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, officially inaugurated the digital empowerment programme for the north eastern zone which involves one-week training for the farmers in the state allowing them to leverage technology to improve their farming skills and yields.
Under the scheme, piloted in Jigawa state last year and then launched in Ondo, participants are equipped with smart tools and provided with N100, 000 seed fund.
Designed and managed by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), the NAVSA empowerment scheme is built as a digital platform to connect the agriculture ecosystem to deliver services to farmers more efficiently as part of the overall agenda to nurture Nigeria’s budding digital economy.
“Netherlands agricultural approach is smart and makes significant use of digital technologies. We want to do this in Nigeria and the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture is an important step in this process,” said Pantami while launching the programme in Gombe assisted by the Director General of NITDA, Mallam Inuwa Kashifu Abdullahi.
With the NAVSA, the IT regulatory agency envisions to have a high percentage of Nigerian farmers digitally literate in the next five years and sufficiently exposed to make the entre agricultural chain more productive and rewarding for farmers by leveraging smart technologies.
All NAHSA participants are provisioned with smart devices, digital skills, internet connectivity, Know your Farmer, KYF- Farmers’ Identification, innovative business ideas, seed fund, and a continuous reinvestment model.
The NAVSA programme is anchored on the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a Digital Nigeria developed by the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy. It targets to modernise farming models and help millions of young people leave the unemployment market for an agriculture sector that is more rewarding and sustainable.
The minister assured that all government agencies will eventually join in promoting NAVSA as a cornerstone initiative to help in the rebirth of faming as a modern economic process. His words: “This program is one of the policies given to the parastatals to implement. Other parastatals will join in the training. Nigeria Communication Commission may probably join in 2021. They will start organising similar training because we have so many models to deploy in agriculture. So we do hope our teeming youths will grasp the opportunities to become entrepreneurs at the end of the training and support the economy by creating more jobs for our citizens.”
According to Mallam Abdullahi, the NAVSA initiative is expected to transform Nigeria’s agriculture sector by becoming more technology driven in line with 21st century farming practice.
