TECHDIGEST – Again, IMPR Emerges Best PR Agency as Nollywood Stars, Public Officers Bag Thinkers Awards.

The multi-award-winning Image Merchants Promotion Limited, the publisher of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential has once again emerged as the best Public Relations Agency of the year.

At the annual awards of excellence hosted by Thinkers Magazine, outstanding individuals and corporate organisations including Nollywood actors were also honoured for excelling in their various fields of endeavour and contribution to national development.

The Presidential Spokesperson, Mallam Garba Shehu who presented the award to the Chief Executive Officer of IMPR, Mallam Yushau Shuaib commended the PR agency for making Nigerian proud at the global scene with its accomplishments in reputation management and crisis communication.

Image Merchants Promotion which was declared the most creative PR agency world in 2020, has series of awards from the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), African Public Relations Association (APRA) and International Public Relations Association (IPRA),

Thinkers Honours IMPR, Top Public Office Nollywood and Kannywood actors were also honoured at the event.

Other recipients of awards of excellence included top entertainers in the Nigerian movie industry known as Nollywood and Kannywood. The awardees included Segun Arinze, Hadiza Gabon, Falalu Dorayi and Kate Henshaw.

Top public officers were also honoured. They are Governor Umaru Fintiri of Adamawa; Gov Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe; Ministers of Communication and Digital Economy, Prof Isah Ali Pantami and that of State, Agriculture, Alhaji Mustapha Baba Shehuri.

Corporate organisations that received awards at the event were the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) Galaxy Backbone and TAJ Bank.

Speaking on the event, the Chairman of Thinkers Communication limited, Alhaji Auwal Mu’azu said the awards ceremony was a product of a rigorous, painstaking and highly competitive process conducted by a committee of experts and specialists in different sectors which spanned over six months before completion. He stated that each award is based on the specific and particular area of excellence by each awardee which serves as justification.

Muazu said: “despite numerous national challenges facing the Nigerian state, it is gratifying to note that some individuals and organisations have remained focused and resolute in their efforts at galvanizing resources to make Nigeria a better place, hence the need for us to celebrate them to serve as motivation and appreciation and also to challenge others to follow suit,” Alhaji Mu’azu stated.

Other dignitaries present at the event included the Former Head of Service of the Federation, Dr Danladi Kifasi, the Spokespersons to the Vice President, Mr. Laolu Akande, the elder statesman, Buba Galadima and Executive Chairman Wonderland Television, Mallam Ismail Sani

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TECH DIGEST – Vice President Yemi Osinbajo says Nigeria is prioritizing innovation and technology investments in agriculture in order to transform the sector by attracting young people and also scaling up productivity.

The event was organised by the African Development Bank and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), in partnership with the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) and the CGIAR System Organisation.

The theme of the dialogue is “Feeding Africa: leadership to scale up successful innovations”.

Osinbajo listed three initiatives –the Economic Sustainability Plan (ESP), the National Livestock Transformation Plan and the Green Imperative Project– as programmes geared toward agricultural transformation.

“At the heart of Nigeria’s post COVID-19 recovery plan, or what we describe as ESP is Agriculture for Food and Jobs Plan (AFJP).

“Here we seek to leverage suitable technologies to build a resilient food system for Nigeria especially in the light of the economic, health and food supply chain devastations caused by the pandemic.

“Implementation is well underway and we have quite a few impressive results already.

“During the COVID lockdowns, we trained and deployed over 34,000 young graduates all over the country, covering over 8,000 local government wards in 774 Local Government Areas.

“Each of these young men and women had a locally developed app on smartphones and electronic tablets to digitally register farmers and map out their farm GIS coordinates.

“So, we have registered and mapped about six million small-holder farmers to their farmlands and we are also currently collecting 200,000 composite soil samples from these farms to be analysed in 22 local soil laboratories to guide local fertiliser blending.”

He said that on the back of the farmer-farm database developed, the government was creating a digital Agriculture Exchange Programme (AgExchange), working with the Alliance Rabobank and MasterCard in collaboration with some local FinTech companies.

According to him, the FinTech companies (FarmCrowdy, Infinera, CropIT) are run by young Nigerians.

“The AgExchange will be an ecosystem or one-stop-shop for providing a range of services and products to small-holder farmers such as real-time e-subsidies, credit-connect by providing credit score of farmers on the platform.

“And also linking them to financiers, insurance services, and market place services for connecting producers, aggregators and off-takers based on competitive market prices.

“ Input suppliers, weather, pests, and disease indexing services will be provided on the exchange as well; the budget for the Agriculture for Food and Jobs Plan AFJP is 1.5 billion dollars.”

On the National Livestock Transformation Plan (NLTP), Osinbajo said that the focus was on transiting gradually from nomadic system of cattle production to the more sedentary method of ranching.

The vice president said that it would involve training pastoralists in new ways of producing and rearing cattle sustainably.

He said it would address the challenges of resource-based violent conflicts between crop farmers and cattle herders, and the generally low milk and beef productivity of indigenous cattle breeds.

“An indigenous technology company has developed a microchip for tracking the cattle and we are working on a pilot project with one of our development partners – the Netherlands government.

“All the energy on the ranches will be from biogas from cattle dung and solar power.

“The ranch will be an integration of crops, pasture, and trees; the crops for the need of the pastoral household, the trees to fight desertification and enhance carbon sequestration rather than emission.

“Funding for this is from budgets of the Federal and State governments and bilateral support from development partners such as the Netherlands. The initial sum is in the order of 280 million dollars,” he said.

Besides Osinbajo, other African leaders who spoke at the event included President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Félix-Antoine Tshisekedi, President of Senegal, Macky Sall and President of Mali, Bah N’Daw.

More so, President of Burkina Faso, Christian Kaboré, Prime Minister of Sudan, Dr Abdalla Hamdok, President, Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia, Sahle-Work Zewde and Prime Minister of Sudan, Dr Abdalla Hamdok.

President of the African Development Bank, Dr Akinwunmi Adesina, former UK Prime Minister, and Executive Chairman of the Institute for Global Change, Mr Tony Blair, and President, International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) were among the speakers.

Gilbert Houngbo and the Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General on 2021 Food Systems Summit, Ms Agnes Kalibata, also spoke at the event.

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TECH DIGEST – In a move to spur the entertainment, creative, and technology sectors in the country, the Buhari administration has commenced a process that will provide the sectors with about N240 billion in financing and investment set to take off by the end of the year.q

The government says the $500 million equivalent financing, which is to be sourced from the AfDB, will be used for the establishment of a $500 million fund in support of what has been named the Nigeria Innovation Programme (NIP). A report of the first draft project proposal was presented by the AfDB to Vice President Yemi Osinbajo last week. The AfDB is expected to give its approval in October.

Confirming the meeting, Laolu Akande, a Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity in the Presidency, said it is public knowledge that the vice president has spoken publicly about the $500m facility.

He added that details of how the facility will work were discussed on Thursday at a meeting presided over by Mr Osinbajo which had in attendance cabinet ministers, representative of the African Development Bank (AfDB), among others.

Mr Akande explained that the plan to get the funding is an outcome of the Technology and Creativity Working Group set up few years ago with members drawn from the private and public sectors chaired by the vice president. The working group was carved out of the Nigerian Industrial Policy and Competitiveness Advisory Council earlier set up by President Muhammadu Buhari also chaired by the vice president.

The Nigeria Innovation Programme, NIP, proposed by the federal government, seeks to boost innovation and job creation, and foster growth in the technology and creativity entrepreneurship ecosystem.

According to Mr Akande, already nine states comprising Lagos, Osun, Edo, Cross River, Anambra, Kaduna, Adamawa and Plateau were initially selected as focus states, while Borno, Gombe and Kwara States were recommended by the Presidency for the programme.

Also PwC, which is consulting on the project during its feasibility study, considered potential innovation community and State cluster/innovation blocks in selecting more states, which resulted in the inclusion of Akwa-Ibom, Ogun, Delta, Edo, Enugu, and Oyo States.

The NIP will focus on four development pillars namely: human capital, financing, infrastructure and enabling environment.

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