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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) at the weekend in Ibadan, Oyo state concluded the five days intensive training leading to the adoption of another 75 smart farmers into the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) platform at the University of Ibadan.
The addition adoption is “inspired by the success stories emanating from the implementation of and its prospect to attract the youths to embrace agriculture, leveraging on the digital technologies,” NITDA stated this week in an official release.
One of the goals of the NAVSA is to build a sustainable digital platform that provides varieties of information for more than half of the actors in the agriculture ecosystem to enable them become highly-productive in agribusiness.
NAVCA has adopted almost 992 smart farmers and created thousands of direct and indirect jobs to Nigerians.
RELATED: NAVSA: NITDA targeting to create 5,000 smart farmers among varsity students
At the closing ceremony, digital tools and seed funding were provided to the beneficiaries by the Director General, NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi.
“We sincerely thank the Vice Chancellor, the Dean of the faculty of Agriculture and entire staff for unfettered support to make this programme a reality and we believe that it will spur you to expand the scope far above what NITDA has donated,” said the NITDA boss who was represented by Assistant Director, Digital Economy Development, Dr. Ayodele Bakare.
Giving an overview of the programme, he disclosed that the programme was designed in two folds; to build the digital skill and literacy skills of the beneficiaries and to practically demonstrate to them how feasible it is to run a smart farm.
He said that the programme was initiated by NITDA to demonstrate that IT is an enabler of all other sectors of the economy, and if properly deployed and adopted by farmers, it would aid food production and security in the country, adding that the essence of the training is for the beneficiaries to be able to manage their smart farms and become self-reliance and self-employed.
The Vice Chancellor, Prof kayode Adebowale who was represented by Pro. Malachy Akporoga of Soil Science Department said, “the replica of what NITDA has done for the beneficiaries is to light their candles and expressed conviction that they too, would also light other people’s candles with it.
“Most of you would leave this school and go out there to replicate what NITDA has done for you. NITDA cannot training all of you but they have found you worthy of the programme and I believe you also help them to train more people, when you start others will follow,” he added.
The Dean, Faculty of Agriculture, Prof. Stella Odebowale, commended NITDA for the foresight to inject digital technologies into farm practice saying that it would make agriculture attractive to the youths.
Earlier, an agriculture entrepreneur, Mr. Akin Alabi, who was also one of the resource persons, noted that NAVSA programme would surely add values to agriculture businesses in Nigeria. “NITDA has impacted the prerequisite knowledge on the beneficiaries to ensure the project does not fail and with this, we can take digital agriculture to the next level.”
The 75 beneficiaries, who were drawn from different departments of Faculty of Agriculture and Computer Science, were full of praise for NITDA saying that the programme has broaden their horizon to think beyond seeing farming as laborious enterprise.
Deborah Onuchi, one of the beneficiaries, expressed delight that with the adoption of digital technologies, farming practice has become seamless and much more enterprising with newer opportunities.
