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Disruptive innovation will expand the country’s agricultural value chain, said The Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), said Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.
The NITDA’s boss while receiving the Co-Founder of Corporate Farmers International (CFI), Mr. Akinwale Alabi and his team recently in Abuja said ICT has a critical role in the agricultural sector; can guarantee cash flow and be able to make agriculture a major contributor to the nations’ gross domestic product (GDP).
RELATED: NITDA brings NAVSA smart farming to 50 NYSC members
The CFI is seeking to explore possible areas of collaboration with NITDA in smart agriculture.
According to Abdullahi, disruptive innovation using emerging technologies will create new markets and easy access to new products and services which informed NITDA’s launch of the smart agriculture initiative.
His words: “NITDA launched National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) programme to boost the capacity of young Nigerian farmers in the digital world market. NAVSA seeks to digitally transform the agricultural economy of farmers and their business models across all value chains to increase productivity.
“There is a need to build these pieces of equipment locally by challenging our startups and tech gurus to come up with solutions to such problems. The agency has a Fab-Lab to check the product initiated through a proof-of-concept test. It then proceeds to the fabrication of the product to create a prototype for testing and then later mass production,”
The NAVSA pilot program was launched at the Federal University of Agriculture Abeokuta, (FUNAAB) Ogun State, with 100 young farmers followed by the Federal University of Dutse (FUD), Jigawa State to create jobs in the agriculture sector for millions of young people.
Abdullahi stressed that the NITDA Strategic Roadmap and Action Plan (SRAP) is a document crafted by the agency that contains the vision of developing Nigeria into a sustainable digital economy that is prosperous and driven by technology.
He said SRAP has been tailored to proactively facilitate the country’s transformation into a sustainable digital economy but requires an elaborate stakeholder collaboration in implementing the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) for a Digital Nigeria.
SRAP is fostered on seven 7 pillars namely: Developmental Regulation; Digital Literacy d Skills, Digital Transformation, Digital Innovation d Entrepreneurship, Cybersecurity, Emerging Technologies and Promotion Indigenous Content Development.
According to NITDA’s boss, the pillars will foster dynamic regulatory instruments that will unlock opportunities across different sectors of the economy, enable the development of digital skills of Nigerians across different works of life, provide a robust digital platform to drive digitalization processes in the digital economy and enable innovation-driven small and medium enterprises to thrive.
“We expect that the outcome of this pillar will create opportunities for job creation,” Abdullahi added while stressing the need to “create a platform to bring the farmers, up takers, and financial institutions together to ease the purchase of goods and services without leaving your destination. Instead, all you need is to place a request on the platform, requesting the logistics company to pick up and deliver to the point of initiation.”
Earlier, Alabi said the company is known for innovation around the agricultural ecosystem, building technologies, and rendering solutions for the system at large to boost production of agricultural produce.
His words: Our major focus is to building young entrepreneurs and youth talents that will shape the narrative of Agriculture. And build a new system that will take Nigeria’s agricultural system to the next level.
“I want to commend the DG of NITDA for the giant strides, intervention, programs, and the launch of the Digital Agricultural strategy that concentrates on the Agricultural sector. Taking advantage and being part of the enterprise document will change people’s perception of farming in the country.”
