Corrigendum- ICRISAT to implement $50 EU new E-wallet for farmers

Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain Group Picture at the Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

Corrigendum

We reference to our story on “ ICRISAT to implement $ 50 EU new E- wallet for farmers” we hereby want to make the following correction against the $50 million targeted at farmers in Africa  for the purpose of putting record straight as rightly observed by Pierre C. Sibiry Traore.

Mr. Pierre. Traore called our attention to the following as “We are grateful to the FoodFarmNews network for reporting on the recent “Phygital smallholder value chains organized by MANOBI Incl. Digital Solution LTD in partnership with FMARD, ICRISAT and CCAFS. 

We wish to bring a small corrigendum to this blog entry, during the event we communicated instead that (1) the agCelerant value chain orchestration platform aims to connect 50 million smallholders to markets in sub-Saharan Africa (of which 15 million in Nigeria) within 5 years, in collaboration with FMARD, ICRISAT, and other partners, (ii) that this effort corresponds to a total value in annual agricultural credit lines of about USD 23bn, and that MANOBI was working with various financial institutions to promote such investments through agCelerant. 

We also introduced the EU-funded NADIRA innovation action (Nurturing Africa’s Digital Revolution for Agriculture, for which Nigeria is a launch country, as a mechanism to accelerate the agricultural transformation brought by agCelerant through Earth Observation and IoT. More details can be shared on request. Best regards”

We sincerely apologize for the error , it was unintended.

The International Crops Research Institute for Semi-Arid Tropics Centres (ICRISAT) is to implement European Union (EU) 50 million dollar project targeted at 50 million farmers from now till 2020 by using a new electronics wallet called Phygital platform which has been ascribed to be better in term of efficiency in inputs distribution.

To this effect, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) has given its nod to start the phygital platform experimentation with Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Program-1 (ATASP-1) and Fadama III Additional Financing (AF).

Dr Buka Hassan Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development during his address.

Unveiling this technology at the FMARD, the Director General, Manobi Digital Agricultural Company, Mr. Daniel Annerose said that the phygital system was a platform created to provide farmers with market information, access to certified credit, inputs, services and protection against risks and exploitation, adding it would lead to more money for trading in agricultural produce as effort was on going to source 50 million dollar from the EU towards the financing of 50 million farmers between now and 2020.

Dr. Hakeem Ayinde Ajeigbe,(ICRISAT) - Kano Station and  Country Representative - Nigeria West & Central Africa Program during his presentating

Dr. Annerose said that the first beneficiary of the platform would be small farmer holders saying ‘‘ we want to embark quickly on 100,000 farmers in the next month and 50million before the end of 2020 we will have 50million farmers in Nigeria, connect them direct to the industry, as we will also release the financial investment of the banks to small scale farmers, as the banks will be presented with the data of the farmers, to understand the farmers achievements and what the farmer is doing and to know if the risk is worth taking for the farmers”

He added that the company has been working with FMARD and other relevant agencies to support the finances of the farmers saying that the project had already started in Bauchi state with progress to commence in Ibadan very would soon.

Cross section at the  Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain held at Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

ICRISAT Country Representative, Dr. Hakeem Ajeigbe told Food farm news that the project was going to be sustainable unlike the other electronic wallet system used in the past saying “unlike the GES that is not sustainable, where government needs to be pumping money every year, this one, government doesn’t need to, this one is going to create permanent job for the facilitators unlike the GES that did not create permanent job”

Cross section at the  Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain held at Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

 He added that the system was going to link farmers directly with input providers and market off takers stressing that under the last Growth Enhancement Scheme Support (GESS) “the seed companies just went and deposit the seeds in a certain center that farmers would have to go there and pick, but with this new model, farmers will have the choice to go to seed company of their choice to collect, so if company “ A” is not providing good seeds, the farmer has a choice to change to another provider”

Cross section at the  Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain held at Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

        

Continuing, he said: ‘‘We are going to launch the project with the ATASP-1 and FADAMA III AF farmers, but working with as many more farmers is our target without any discrimination. Already ATASP-1 and the FADAMA want all their farmers to be there because at the end of the day we are looking at the market, the combined market of Flour Mills of Nigeria, Honeywell, Derivatives, Guinness, and other small mill for sorghum, their combined market demand is in the tune of 500,000MT, so the ATASP-1 and the FADAMA farmers cannot meet 20 per cent of that so we need all sorghum farmers”

Cross section at the  Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain held at Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

Also speaking on the occasion, the Permanent Secretary (PS), FMARD, Dr. Bukar Hassan pointed that the integration of the small farmers’ holder into an efficient data collection system like this new phygital would transform the ecosystem of agricultural transformation of this present administration to a greater height saying “ we have to provide small farmers access to affordable capital support, extension services that will give him knowledge to evolve his farming skills from subsistence to commercial farming”

Tunde Temowo Derivatives Industry Ltd Boss in blue, Adekunle Alege, the National Agricbusiness Specialist ATA Support Program Phase 1 (ATASP-1) FMARD

Dr. Bukar stressed that the FG was determined to restructured the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) so as to be able to meet up with its mandates pointed that his ministry  through the GES has greatly impacted on farmers with agricultural inputs subsidy.

Cross section at the  Presentation on Phygital Smallholder Value Chain held at Minister of Agriculture Conference Room

He added that “what Nigerian farmers need most is access to finance. The main reason we have low return of loan repayment of agricultural loan in the country is that 90 percent of those who took the loans are not real farmers. We have to make sure that the people who are enjoying these credits from the financial institutions are real productive farmers”.