The Central Bank of Nigeria(CBN), Tuesday released the guidelines for private sector-led accelerated agriculture development scheme.
This is in line with its developmental mandate, to develop and introduce development finance programmes and schemes to expand access to finance to critical sectors and segments of the economyto achieve food self-sufficiency as well as diversification.
According information on its website, While pursuing this mandate, the population of the country has continued to rise at nearly 3% annually.
Recent studies indicated that the country’s population pyramid is bulging around the youth segment, with an estimated 75 per cent of the population identifiedto be aged below 35 years.
A large segment of this population would have eked out a living if adequate opportunities were harnessed in agriculture given its potential of employing over 70% of the nation’s workforce.
While addressing the rising food security challenge due to unproportionate production compared to population growth; value addition to agriculture; including provision of more land for cultivation has remained stagnant over the years.
To address the food security and youth unemployment challenges across the country, the CBN introduced the Accelerated Agriculture Development Scheme (AADS) to engage 370,000 youth in agricultural production, in collaboration with state governments.
The Private Sector-Led Accelerated Agriculture Development Scheme (P-AADS) was also developed to complement AADS by exploring private sector partnership to facilitate more rapid land clearing for production of key agricultural commodities.
Objectives of the Scheme The broad objective of the P-AADS is to facilitate increased private sector agricultural production of staple foods and industrial raw materials, as well as support food security, job creation and economic diversification.
Eligible participants are; Agro-processors of agricultural commodities engaged in backward integration; Prime anchors and commodity associations participating under the Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (ABP)with evidence of contiguous land readily available for clearing and cultivation of agricultural commodities;
