The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) and the National Agriculture Development Fund (NADF) has signed a Memorandum of Understanding, (MoU) to boost productivity in Agriculture.
The NITDA’s Director General, Kashifu Inuwa and the NADF Executive Secretary, Muhammed Abu both signed the MoU, which would ensure food security in Nigeria through the infusion of emerging technologies.
“We have started our initiatives around agriculture like the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA), we have a demo farm here in Abuja, and we have been partnering with Universities across the country doing research and Startups to develop technologies and do proof of concepts with the technologies on farmlands,” said Inuwa.
“This year, we gave grants to Startups who have ideas on how to use emerging technologies to boost agriculture. And we are working with some of them in existing farms across the country to demonstrate how technology can boost productivity in that space,” he added.
The Executive Secretary of NADF Mohammed Ibrahim in his remark said that the nexus between Agriculture and Technology cannot be over emphasised, as the agricultural sector is facing some temporary challenges like the issues of funding, climate change, insecurity and many more.
“We have seen interesting technological patterns which have given a lot of impact and optimization in our sector like AI, WAV, IoT and many more and we feel like without optimising agriculture and looking at it from this evidence-based perspective as a Fund we may not achieve much.
“There is no denying the fact that empirical evidence, especially data backed evidence, would help us to allocate our limited resources better. So, in our stride to see that we are doing a lot more with less we have decided to come in and especially be part of monitoring and evaluation which will eventually direct us towards achieving that mantra of ‘doing more with less’ and that is why we are here.”
