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The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) is drumming up support for the use of digital technology among farmers to boost agriculture output.
Director General for the IT regulatory agency, Mallam Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, said the NITDA remained committed to developing frameworks and encouraging the use of technologies to improve the agriculture sector.
“Building a vibrant digital agriculture sector that leverages on digital technologies and innovations has become imperative as the population of Nigeria continues to grow with large demographic of young adult,” said Abdullahi at the recent Review Workshop on National Digital Agriculture Strategy (NDAS) which held virtually.
He said the NITDA under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy and in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has developed the NDAS to build a vibrant digital agriculture sector that leverages digital technologies and innovations.
This has become “imperative as the population of Nigeria continues to grow with large demographic of young adults, especially people migrating from the rural areas to the urban areas,” added Abdullahi. He was represented at the event by the Director, eGovernment Development and Regulation, Dr Vincent Olatunji.
The NITDA’s boss noted that leveraging on digital technologies and innovations will attract youthful population into agricultural sector, create new digital business models across the agriculture value chain, enable millions of jobs increase productivity and increase the contribution of sector to Gross Domestic Product, (GDP).
“I belief it will make Nigeria a leading country in food security and exporter of standard agricultural products to the rest of the world,” he added.
He stressed that President Muhammadu Buhari has identified agriculture as a key frontier in addressing the economic and unemployment challenges in the country. Because it is one of the major sectors government is leveraging on to take 100 million Nigerians out of poverty by 2030, the use of digital tools have become strategic to achieving that goal, said Abdullahi.
He reiterated that the agency was working closely with its parent ministry to achieve this goal.
“NITDA has developed a programme to support the achievement of the ministry’s mandates and this could be seen as one of the visions of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy called the Nigeria Smart Initiative (NSI).”
He said this will facilitate the integration of digital technologies and innovations in every sector of the economy with the aim of unlocking inherent potentials and opportunities, thereby enabling and optimizing each sector substantially for economic diversification and contribution to GDP.
One of the facilitators at the workshop Mr. Lukman Lamid of the NITDA’s eGovernment Department and Regulations explained that eight complementary initiatives have been designed for NDAS among which are; organise Agtech Entrepreneual training programs for startups, establishing Digital Agriculture Strategy and Advisory Forum, establishing and promoting Agtech Career Initiative.
Other are establishing rural digital literacy initiative in Agriculture, establish agricultural digital innovation hubs for research and innovations, build consortium on ICT for climate-smart agriculture platforms and gender inclusion in digital agriculture
Lamid said a platform for the Nigeria Digital Agriculture Community group will be created to include NITDA, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy, related federal public institutions, state governments and farmers.
