Introduction
With the policy shift to sustainable agricultural practices in Nigeria since the return of democracy in 1999, there is an increasing need to take a closer look at Agencies that provide productive partnerships for the economy to grow. That is more so, to breathe life into the federal government’s diversification policy, especially now that the COVID-19 challenge has worsened revenue flow from crude oil sales.
One of such is the Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support – (APPEALS). Propelled by the desire of not a few Nigerians to get more involved in agriculture, yours truly reached out to Mrs. Aishat Onusi, the National Communication Specialist of APPEALS Project to let the public know much more about it.
Stated below is her response to some questions, with regards to the aims and objectives, the rationale behind its setting up, the focus on the value chain and of course, the vision and mission statements that drive its processes.
APPEALS is a Project of the Federal Government of Nigeria, initiated by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and supported by the World Bank. The Project which is an Investment Project Financing (IPF) was approved by the World Bank Board on March 23, 2017 and became disbursement effective on May 24, 2018 to be implemented for 6 years. The project is expected to close by March 2023. The APPEALS Project is being implemented in six participating states, namely: Cross River, Enugu, Kaduna, Kano, Kogi and Lagos states.
Aims and Objectives
The aim of the Project is salutary as it was set up to support Small and Medium scale farmers in the six participating states. Indeed, it is specifically focused at demonstrating possibilities and opportunities along eleven selected priority agricultural Value Chains. These include Rice, Wheat, Cassava, Cocoa, Cashew, Aquaculture, Poultry, Maize, Dairy, Ginger and Tomato. The Project broadly aims to support the Federal Government’s efforts with regards to strengthening Food Security, Export Potential and Livelihood Improvement.
The number of project’s direct beneficiaries is estimated at 60,000 individuals (i.e. 10,000 beneficiaries per state), and 300,000 farm household members as indirect beneficiaries. Interestingly, it is anticipated that 35 percent of direct beneficiaries (or 21,000 individuals) will be women. By design, the project has a dedicated sub-component to benefit women and youth that will allow them to develop agri-businesses that are expected to create jobs and improve their livelihoods. To cut across a wide spectrum of the society, 5% of the Women and Youth beneficiaries will be People with Disability and Special Needs.
The project monitoring and evaluation (M&E) and information system includes a gender tracker to ensure adequate documentation on different categories of project beneficiaries.
The Project is built on five Components namely: 1. Production and Productivity Enhancement 2. Primary Processing, Value Addition; Post-harvest Management and Women & Youth Empowerment 3. Infrastructure Support to Agri-business Clusters 4. Technical Assistance, Knowledge Management and Communication and 5. Project Management and Coordination.
The rationale for setting up the APPEALS Project
Although Nigeria has a distinct comparative advantage in agriculture with increased contribution to the GDP, productivity in the sector remains low. The agriculture sector of Nigeria is characterized by low productivity; little and untimely access to inputs; lack of seed funds for establishing agro-processing plants by producer cooperatives; lack of access to supportive infrastructure; challenging business environment; limited access to markets; low level of technology adoption; weak quality control mechanism; and low capacity at all levels. The production system has not developed in terms of significant value addition or processing and has remained a producer of mainly staple crops.
Following the government policy thrust of promoting value chain approach to achieve the Agriculture Promotion Policy goal, the APPEALS project intervention is designed to tackle key constraints, which hinder the development of the value chains, and prevent greater inclusion of small and medium scale farmers in agribusiness supply chains. The project will scale up the Business Alliance model, successfully implemented under the closed World Bank-supported Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP). The Project believes strongly that promoting higher agricultural productivity, especially in smallholders farming, can help set off strong rural dynamics.
The APPEALS project aims at supporting the transition of small subsistence farmers’ production system (farming 1-5 ha) to a market-oriented agricultural undertaking and supporting middle size farmers (5-10 ha) to address constraints in enhancing their productivity as well as effective participation in value chains.
- Selection of the Priority Value Chains:
The project support is focussing on priority value chains as identified in Nigeria’s Agricultural Promotion Policy, APP (The Green Alternative 2016-2020). Priority value chains selected from the APP long list for the purpose of project support are: (i) staples with quick returns and benefits; (ii) products with potential for immediate improvement of food security; (iii) value chains to enhance the national production of crops (rice, maize, cassava and wheat); (iv) products with a potential for export and foreign currency earnings (cocoa and cashew); and (v) short-cycle, quick income generating high value products for livelihood improvement, particularly suitable for women and youth businesses such as horticulture, poultry and aquaculture.
Each participating state is focussing on three promising value chains. This allows for greater impact and a focused approach, with priority given to structuring value chains with potential for geographic and vertical integration across the states. For example, maize can be integrated into the animal feed industry to support the development of the poultry and aquaculture value chains.
The Vision and Mission Statements
- Project Development Objective (PDO)
The objective of the Project is to enhance agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improve value addition along priority value chains in the Participating States.
The PDO will be achieved through supporting farmers’ productivity and their linkage to markets, facilitating consolidation of agricultural products and cottage processing, facilitating farmers and small and medium businesses’ clustering and connection to infrastructure network and business services, providing technical assistance and institutional support both to beneficiaries, federal and state governments in value chain development. Increased productivity, production, and improving processing and marketing of the targeted value chains are expected to foster job creation along the value chains.
As more issues evolve, we shall be taking look at other aspects of APPEALS in subsequent editions.