TECHDIGEST – The Federal Government of Nigeria, through National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), distributed smart agriculture materials to beneficiaries of the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) 5-Day Empowerment Programme which took place at Al-Qalam University, Katsina, Katsina State.

NAVSA Programme is designed to accelerate massive job creation, economic diversification and growth, facilitate the integration of digital technologies and innovations in the agriculture processes and practices in order to significantly increase productivity, improve food security, ensure an eco-friendly agricultural practice, attract potential talents and youths into agriculture professions to maximise outcomes.

In this edition, the Federal Government has improved green energy-powered smart brooding to enhance the survival rate of broilers, a smart irrigation system to support a year-long production, and a soil nutrient monitoring system to support information-driven farming on a demo land.

This is in addition to other benefits such as: Smart Device, 100,000 Naira seed fund, AgricTech training/capacity Building, Connectivity (Internet and CUG), NAVSA Platform, Financial inclusion through digital wallets, e-Extension and insurance services, Continuous reinvestment model opportunities and Unmanned Area Vehicle (UAV)/Drone for smart farm.

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Speaking during the closing ceremony on Friday, the Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE who was represented by Ag. Director, Digital Economy Development of the Agency, Engr. Salisu Kaka, stated that, “Agriculture remains one of the critical sectors of Nigeria’s economy. This is evident in the policies of the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR. Every economic, developmental and social policy gives agriculture priority.”

Inuwa said the NAVSA Empowerment will enhance agriculture value chain, create new value and opportunities through new business models and services, and ultimately enable the creation of millions of jobs while taking the people out of poverty and enabling economic growth and diversification.

“With our potential in arable land size and youthful population, modernizing the agricultural sector can change the narrative and multiply the contribution of the sector to the national GDP in many folds. Unfortunately, the sector is the least digitized in the country. It has been proved that any digitized business has the potential to grow exponentially.”

“We hold a social contract to ensure IT drives every aspect of life and contributes to every community and national development as a whole. In line with our mandates, we carry out digital technology-driven interventions in any industry and sector of the economy across the country.”

“This is evident in all digitised economic sectors of the world such as the Bank, financial services, media and entertainment among others. Undoubtedly, digitization of the economic sectors has proved to be the game changer for economic transformation across the globe.

It is believed that if the agriculture sector is properly managed and enhanced, it would be a genuine means of eradicating poverty, improving people’s standard of living, diversifying the economy and creating prosperity for Nigerians,” Inuwa noted.

He further said, “We all have it as a duty to ensure agriculture is practised as a business and not a way of life as usual. There is a need to modernise agricultural practices in the country. In view of this conviction and in line with its mandates of universal IT access and integration into every sector of the economy, NITDA has designed a digital technology and ecosystem-driven innovation to address most of our challenges in the agriculture sector.

“The narrative is being changed through NAVSA and other digital agricultural initiatives. This is to support the digitisation of the agricultural sector to address our challenges, exploit the opportunities and accelerate economic growth, in line with the Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP) and the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy.

He added that NESP takes agriculture as a mainstay for economic recovery, diversification, and job creation. The plan proposed a mass agriculture programme to bring 20,000 to 100,000 hectares of new farmland under cultivation in every State of the Federation.

According to Inuwa, the aim is to create 5 million job opportunities, directly and indirectly spanning the entire agricultural value chain, from ‘farm to table’. This can only be achieved by incentivising and engaging millions of Nigerians in farming and agro-processing.

“We have chosen to work with AUK in this edition of NAVSA because we are convinced that being a community-owned institutions, it possesses a unique advantage of a having a highly sustainable business model that can support the sustainability framework of NAVSA. We will be at advantage of having the opportunity to prove that community-based innovations are better ways of proffering solutions to our socio-economic challenges.”

“With the NAVSA, we also believe that unemployment, insecurity and the underdeveloped economy challenges we are facing today in Nigeria can be addressed through agriculture,” he concluded.

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TECHDIGEST – As part of its efforts and commitment to reinforce and foster the digital transformation of the agricultural sector to support food security in Africa, the Director-General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa CCIE said right policies, innovation, financing, and investment, Africa’s agriculture could be transformed into a powerhouse not only to feed a growing population but to create decent employment for millions of young people”.

Inuwa stated this during a public sector media webinar roundtable discussion, with the theme: “Digital Transformation for Food Security in Africa”.

The DG, who was represented by the Director of Information Technology Infrastructural Solutions (ITIS), Dr. Abdullahi Usman Gambo stated that digital agricultural transformation should be a priority on the policy agenda of African Governments in the quest to meet the challenges of food and nutrition, insecurity, climate change, youth unemployment, and overall economic growth, noting that it has been projected that the total worth of the African food industry will hit the $1 trillion mark by 2030.

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“Agricultural transformation remains one of Africa’s most pressing priorities but has been difficult to achieve. By all statistics, Africa needs to triple its current levels of agricultural productivity to meet the continent’s food and nutrition security. But we have the resources and potential to feed the whole world not just Africa while boosting the continent’s economic growth”.

The DG revealed that about 82 million hectares out of Nigeria’s total land area of 91 million hectares were found to be arable and that only about 42 percent of this cultivable area is farmed according to research.

He then advised that the untapped potential of the growing youth population which constitutes over 50 percent of the estimated 200 million population with about 200 million mobile subscribers, 150 million active internet subscription/users, and 42% broadband penetration could be a game-changer for the agriculture sector.

“In Nigeria, the importance of agriculture in boosting the economy, creating more jobs, reducing poverty, growing nutritious food to feed the population, exporting surplus, and safeguarding the country’s environment cannot be overstated. I am convinced that agriculture, agribusiness, and food sectors remain key pillars of Nigeria’s economy and will be essential to the country’s full recovery from the economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and future food security”, he added.

Inuwa noted that technologies ranging from SMS, USSD, web, and mobile to the blockchain, robotics, geoinformation technologies, remote sensing technology, IoT, big data, analytics, AI, machine and deep learning among others, present a huge opportunity for Africa and in particular, Nigeria to change the narrative of low productivity, poor food quality, and food insecurity. There are a lot of use cases that present the potential of digital technologies, research, and innovations at addressing these challenges.

The DG avowed that NITDA in collaboration with relevant stakeholders had developed the Nigeria Digital Agriculture Strategy (NDAS) with a vision to make Nigeria one of the top three (3) most food-secure countries in Africa and the top 20 largest exporters of standard agricultural produce by 2030 through the use and application of digital technologies and innovations.

NDAS is at the heart of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) and the Nigeria Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP) for agriculture transformation. NDEPS is the Federal Government’s Policy for accelerating digital transformation in every sector of the economy. NESP takes agriculture as a mainstay for economic recovery, diversification, and job creation after Covid-19 plunged the country into recession.

The plan proposed a mass agriculture programme to bring 20,000 to 100,000 hectares of new farmland under cultivation in every State of the Federation. The aim is to create 5 million job opportunities, directly and indirectly spanning the entire agricultural value chain, from ‘farm to table’. The policy is creating an enabling environment for the rapid deployment of digital solutions in our agri-food businesses, the DG said.

Inuwa also revealed that to implement the policy and plan, further digitise the agriculture sector, address obvious challenges, exploit the opportunities, create massive jobs, and accelerate economic diversification and growth, the Agency has come up with National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA).

NAVSA is a technology and innovation-driven agricultural initiative aimed at addressing low agriculture productivity and other challenges. Agriculture financing and repayment difficulties are being addressed through the introduction of closed and open wallet systems on mobile payment platforms.

“NAVSA is designed to allow every ecosystem player to participate based on win-win business models to create far-reaching network effects and offer values that never existed before. The concept of an adopted village implies that a farmer will have to be adopted before having access to all the benefits the platform offers”, he explained.

He further noted that measures are in place to identify a farmer thereby solving problems peculiar to identity. “So far, we have adopted 765 farmers across 68 local government areas in 4 states and consequently, this has created 2,500 jobs. Our target is to have adopted farmers from all over the country”.

In her remarks, the country manager of Microsoft, Mrs. Ola Williams said agriculture is now the main driver of employment in Nigeria as such it is important to explore ways to make farming in Nigeria to become more profitable and to encourage more entrepreneurs to consider farming as viable means of livelihood.

She stated that Microsoft is in partnership with the private sector and NITDA to ensure leverage on all the platforms provided by NITDA in digitizing the agricultural sector.

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TECH DIGEST – The Executive Vice Chairman of the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Prof. Umar Danbatta has posited that there is the need for ethical leadership in order to realise the dream of economic growth using the fourth industrial revolution, also known as 4IR.

The NCC Boss posited this while delivering a speech at the 2020 Hybrid (ONLINE/ONSITE) Annual Directors Conference (ADC) organised By The Institute Of Directors (IoD) two days ago.

Describing the 4IR as the age of intelligence and encompasses technologies like high-speed mobile Internet, Artificial Intelligence, automation, the use of big data analytics and cloud computing, Danbatta noted that 4IR is the evolved new ways of doing things to ensure economic sustainability.

“The possibilities provided by the 4IR are limitless and can generate employment for Nigeria’s teeming youth population. Therefore, in order to achieve economic growth using the 4IR there is the need for ethical leadership,” he emphasised.

He explained that the 4IR is the information and digital economy age which if properly enhanced and exploited can serve as a major revenue earner for the Country in the post-oil era. This is because, according to him while natural resources such as oil, gas, etc are finite, data and information are infinite.

He however highlighted the major constraint in Nigeria facing the 4IR to include the inadequacy of digital skills, infrastructure deficit, enabling environment and inadequate infrastructure.

Speaking on what government is doing to address these challenges, the former University lecturer disclosed that the Federal Government in its bid to ensure economic growth and sustainability has collaborated with the Nigerian Economic Summit Group (NESG) to discuss issues and challenges facing the development of Nigeria with a view to developing and harmonizing ideas towards diversification and sustaining the economy.

In addition, the National Sustainability Committee chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, developed a National Economic Sustainability Plan (NESP). The plan is aimed at overcoming the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, enhancing oil and non-oil revenues, creation of a financial stimulus package for the Nigerian economy, support for MSMEs and the creation of jobs.

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