By: Adebisi Adeniji –
The Human and Environmental Agenda (HEDA) has initiated a project tagged Feeding Futures Africa (FFA) to advance youth participation in agriculture.
FFA is one of the programs organized by HEDA in partnership with OXFAM under its 3-year active citizenship for food security campaign tagged United For Food (UFF).
As the call for diversification deepens in the country and in line with United Nations Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) for food security in Africa, HEDA is empowering the youth to leverage on the vast arable land in the country and the Agri-technology.
The two-day event was graced by government officials, policy makers, trail blazers in the agricultural industry as well as Nigerian ace Musician, Sound Sultan who is also a cat-fish farmer and OXFAM Ambassador.
The youth, some of which attended HEDA master classes for the 2 days, were taken through panels bordering on different agricultural spheres including finance, insurance, agri-technology and agropreneurship.
As part of its plan to further the conversation with the youth, HEDA launched the agro-connect website, an online resource centre which will serve as a one-stop shop where farmers can get expert advice and timely information necessary to increase productivity.
Also, Nigeria’s hip hop musician, Sound Sultan launched the 2018 My farmer My hero competition. The competition aimed at promoting agriculture by having youth submit farm documentaries after an active participation of a farmer’s life in the farm.
In the words of the Executive Secretary of HEDA, Mr. Sulaimon Arigbabu, urged government at all levels to prioritise agriculture.
“The government must take agriculture, feeding Nigerians as a right, as an obligation of the government that government cannot run away from. If they see it as an obligation, they are going to do more to deliver on that obligation. Then, you now need to work the talk. Government needs to fund agriculture appropriately. See the little we did on rice, see the mileage it gave us.
So imagine if we do that across many things that we depend on importation for. Imagine on cocoa, Nigeria imports less of chocolate and we export more of processed cocoa than we are doing. Imagine the impact that’s it’s going to have on the country and the lives on our young people.
And it’s also for us as citizens to do our own little in our space not to wait for government. We are also to make demand on government because that is why they are government, they are supposed to deliver. If we don’t demand, they will not deliver.”
One of the panelists, a member of Central Bank Committee on Agric Finance, Mr. Abiodun Oyelekan urged the youth to embrace agriculture as a profession.
“Some of us like sharp sharp money, we don’t want to wait,” he said. “It’s not compulsory that you have to be producer, in the agricultural value chain, we have the other sectors that you can key into, there are agricultural processors, marketers, distributors. Information dissemination under agriculture, you can go a lot of places in that. You can promote agriculture.
They are many programs available to assist farmers but they will never give it out to anybody who is not practicing. I am imploring you today to please wake up and go into farming ventures, you’ll make your money.”
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