A German organisation in Nigeria (GIZ), has embarked 3.5mn Euros for farmers’ capacity building and selected financial institutions to develop financial products that fits the needs of farmers and agro-processors or companies.
The intervention is being done through its Green Innovation Centres for Agriculture and Food Sector Programme (GIAE).
Addressing journalists at the just concluded zonal maize farmers’ stakeholders meeting in Abuja, the country project coordinator, Caroline Trimborn, said $3.5mn is earmarked for agricultural financing.
“The money will be going into capacity building for farmers and selected agric institutions. So it is basically to train farmers on financial literacy while also helping companies and financial institutions develop financial products that fit the needs of farmers and agro-processors or companies.
“We will engage in capacity building that will help banks to develop better products such as loan products for farmers. That is a sustainable way of doing, is not that we are giving bank loans but to help banks to be ready for the agric sector financing by developing products that would fit the needs of farmers,” she said.
According to Trimborn, GIZ is working with 55 extension workers on GAP and 20 extension agent on Farmer Business Schools (FBS) in Kano while it has 52 extension agent on Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and 19 extension agents on FBS and by the end of November.
“We would have trained 45,115 farmers on FBS and training of farmers on GAP is per circle, we have done circle one and two from 2016,2017 and we have trained 35,000 farmers but in circle three we have trained 22,000 farmers because GAP training is according to agriculture calendar and by the ending of November, we will be rounding up with circle 5.
“We have also trained over 54,000 maize farmers in Kano and Kaduna,” she explained
She said the stakeholders on maize value chain were brought together on regional basis “to review where we are, what we have done so far, see the impacts and then plan on way forward.”
“That was why we went through scenario exercise to see how the implementation and the sector will look like, while we also get some guidance from the stakeholders,” she added.
On information and communication technologies, she said GIZ has help 55,037 smallholder farmers to employ ICT tools to boost their productivity and increase income.
“It has also developed 3D animated videos to provide proper cultivation and post harvest practices or fertilizer recommendation via smart phone to over 60,558 farmers, while it RiceAdvice application developed by AfricRice, has helped 3,775 farmers to use fertiliser more efficiently.”
GIAE also cooperates with the Swedish service provider ignitia to introduce ISKA weather forecast for the tropics to the Nigerian market. This has helped 8,123 farmers to better plan their work and input application.
