The Federal Government has commenced the training of another 75 farmers under the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA).
The training, spearheaded by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) at the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State, began today (February 13, 2023) with the registration and profiling of the beneficiaries and will culminate on Friday, February 17, 2023, with the presentation of seed funding and digital tools they [can] leverage for smart farming.
Speaking during the profiling ceremony, the team lead and assistant director of the digital economy development department, Dr. Ayodele Bakare urged the beneficiaries to take the training seriously and give it their uttermost attention and interest, as it could be their fortune-changer.
Also, the programme desk officer, Mr. Lukman Lamid enjoined the farmers to be punctual because being selected for the training does not guarantee that digital tools and seed funding would be given to anyone who does not make himself available for the training.
A statement released by NITDA explained that the NAVSA is an initiative of NITDA under the supervision of the Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy which is modelled after smart farming to provide the agricultural sector with the infrastructure to leverage emerging technology like Big Data, Cloud, artificial intelligence and the internet of things (IoTs) for tracking, monitoring, automation and analysing farm operations.
“The programme’s goals are to improve production and productivity of every adopted farmer on the NAVSA platform by 35 per cent, increase the income of every adopted farmer on NAVSA platform by 30 per cent at every harvest, improve production and productivity of any other farmers on NAVSA platform by 20 per cent and increase the income of any other farmer on NAVSA platform by 15 per cent at every harvest,” the statement disclosed, stating further that “the programme has since adopted 835 farmers across five states – Katsina, Ogun, Jigawa, Gombe and Ekiti, as well as the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja – and has created almost 5000 direct and indirect jobs across the country.”
