TheNewsGuru

Tag: Feed

  • ‘Consider yourselves a failure if you can’t feed your people’

    The United States Ambassador to Nigeria, Stuart Symington, on Wednesday said any society that can’t feed its people should be considered a failed society.

    Symington said this at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan during the presentation of a group of young entrepreneurs under the platform of Enable Youth Agriculture programme.

    IITA is providing support for many African youths under the EYA initiative to create a platform where they will be encouraged to choose a career in agriculture.

    About 50 youths who graduated from diverse fields of agricultural disciplines were drawn from Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Congo to take part in the programme. IITA said the programmes began at its Ibadan headquarters in August 2012 and had spread across Africa, bringing under its net vibrant and energetic young people who were trained to become owners and co-owners of independent agribusiness enterprises.

    The US ambassador called on African countries to surmount the challenge of food production, stressing that every nation must encourage its youths to go into agriculture in order to boost food production and achieve food sufficiency.

    While urging the youths to form value chains with other interests, Symington recommended the Ghanaian model of micro-finance where a whole village was transformed by an internally-generated trade interest model of villagers financing themselves from interests they pulled together to finance one another.

    He also urged the youths from different African countries to buy products from one another and put together lessons they learned from themselves in the process of learning the agricultural entrepreneurial skills.

    He said, “You should buy products from each other. You are your own buyers and you should be your own internal buyers. Put together lessons learnt in the process. Each should learn from the mistakes and experiences of the other.

    “You should also learn from the Silicon Valley maxim. In Silicon, they have an expression: ‘If you haven’t failed once, you are not in business.’ You are like Silicon Valley. You will fall; pick yourselves up. Is there anyone who rides a bicycle for the first time without falling down?”

    In his remarks, the Director General of IITA, Dr Nterenya Sanginga, told the ambassador of his effort to convince some Nigerian professors in Missouri, US, to come back to Nigeria and strengthen the agricultural strides being made back home.

    He stated that in the next 30 years, Africa would become the world food basket.

  • FG spends N49b to feed 8m pupils in two years – Presidency

    The Presidency on Thursday said the Federal Government has spent N49bn on the feeding of primary school pupils under the National Home-Grown School Feeding Programme, a component of the government’s Social Investment Programme, in the last two years.

    The Special Adviser to the President on NSIP, Mrs. Mariam Uwais, disclosed this to journalists in Abuja.

    Uwais said 8, 596,340 pupils were currently being fed in 46,247 public primary schools in 24 states.

    The 24 states, according to her, include Abia, Adamawa, Akwa-Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Niger, Ogun, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Sokoto, Taraba, and Zamfara.

    The presidential aide said through the programme, 90,670 Nigerians had been engaged and empowered as cooks while over 100,000 local farmers had also been linked with the programme to supply locally sourced farm produce.

    She said, “We have created a value chain with significant economic benefits to the microeconomic development of the states.

    “The value chain offers additional benefits of job creation and increased livelihood outcomes for both cooks and small holder-farmers, hence improving livelihood and the local economies.”

    Uwais noted that government was having challenges with the implementation of the school feeding programme in Niger and Benue states.

    She said already some officials in the programme in the two states have been handed over to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission for the investigation and prosecution.

    “The National Social Investment Office is ably empowered to suspend the programme in any state where the prescribed standard is reported to have fallen below expectation until a redesigned and realignment is achieved,” the presidential aide noted.

    Uwais said the government has achieved 30 percent improvement in school enrollment in the country since the commencement of the programme.

    She said while the Federal Government budgeted and appropriated N500bn for the 2016 fiscal year and the same amount in 2017, only about N140bn was released in 2017 while N80bn was accessed in 2016.

    Other components of the SIP are N-Power, National Cash Transfer Project, and Government Enterprise and Empowerment Programme.

  • Niger State has capacity to feed Africa – Osinbajo

    The Acting President Yemi Osinbajo says that Niger has the capacity to produce assorted food crops that will feed the African continent.

    Osinbajo said this when he declared open a two-day Niger State Economic Submit with the theme “Impact Investment for Advancing Agricultural Economy and Innovation” in Minna.

    The conference, which attracted economic experts, industrialists and manufacturers as well as some state governors across the country, was organised to attract investors in various fields to boost the state’s economy.

    He commended Gov. Abubakar Bello for organising the conference, noting that it would assist in attracting various investors, especially in the agricultural sector.

    The acting president called on state governments to assist farmers with alternative sources of power, to enable them to process and preserve their farm produce.

    He said that the Federal Government was ready to partner with state governments willing to rehabilitate federal infrastructure in their areas.

    “Niger State Government is collaborating with the Federal Government to complete Baro Port, ” the acting president said.

    Osinbajo said that such projects would create an enabling environment for business activities to thrive in the national economy.

    He said that Niger was hosting three major hydro dams, adding that renewable energy was the way forward to increase the capacity of villagers and farmers for agricultural investment.

    Osinbajo said there was also the need to improve on roads infrastructure for enhanced agricultural development in the state.

    Earlier, Bello said that the state had large deposits of natural resources ranging from hydro carbon at the Bida Basin, gold, copper, tin, iron ore, tantalite, Kaoline and clay.

    He said the potentials in the mining sector were wholly untapped and open for investment.

    Similarly, there abounds tourism potential such as the Zuma Rock, Bark Empire Hills, Nagwamatse Well, Mongo Park Cenotaph and Gurara Waterfalls.

    The governor explained that already, the state government had developed a road map on some cardinal investment potentials in the state such as Banana free trade zone, Garam industrial park, Baron Port and Suleja New Smart City.

     

    (NAN)