In its commitment to provide end-to- end solutions to fix breakages in the agricultural value chain in the country, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL Plc) is partnering with the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI).
The partnership which includes strategic interventions will facilitate the socio-economic development of the country and create at least 110,000 jobs.
“About 10,000 directly and 100,000, indirectly will be created – another instance of NIRSAL Plc’s support for the Federal Government’s efforts to achieve economic stability and prosperity for Nigerians.
“NIRSAL Plc has engaged NASENI as its technical collaborative partner for the conceptualization, design, development, deployment, implementation and execution of various schemes/projects under the NIRSAL-NASENI Comprehensive Tractor Recovery Scheme.
“It is also for the NIRSAL Climate-Smart Modular Geo-Cooperative-Based Irrigation System for Smallholder Farmers and other agricultural value chain-related challenges requiring efficient homegrown scientific and engineering solutions for proof of concept projects and scale-up to attract finance and investment into fixed agricultural value chains.
“As part of the partnership, NIRSAL Plc and NASENI will crowd-in stakeholders from all AVC segments to create AVC-wide commercially viable platforms anchored on Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs),” Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed, NIRSAL Managing Director/CEO said at the launch event hosted at NIRSAL headquarters, Abuja.
He said to make up for the deficit in tractors and other mechanization equipment, NIRSAL and NASENI will recover and reinvigorate idle agricultural equipment for enhanced mechanization of agricultural value chain in Nigeria.
In addition, the technological capacity of NASENI in the area of solar modules production creates a critical backbone in the provision of off-grid energy to power modular irrigation and agro-processing clusters that are domiciled within NIRSAL Agro Geo-Cooperative clusters, Abdulhameed explained.
Critically, he said it would help optimize the capacity of NASENI and expressed optimism that the partnership would ensure that there are sustainable fixes to identify challenges facing the nation’s agribusiness sector.
“The partnership will go a long way in maximizing the agricultural potentials of the country, thereby contributing to the achievement of food security, inclusive economic growth, diversification, and employment generation,” the NIRSAL boss stressed.
Restating NIRSAL’s commitment to the success of the collaboration, Abdulhameed said the agency would extend its Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) cover to finance invested in the scheme, provide project monitoring, reporting and remediation services as well as technical assistance.
According to him, it will also create capacity building, advisory services, create, and facilitate capital market opportunities.
Also speaking, Prof. M.S. Haruna, NASENI’s Executive Vice-Chairman assured that NASENI would provide a cutting edge research and development on innovative approaches for all the schemes and projects under the agreement.
This, he noted, will advance mechanization, modular irrigation activities and other agricultural engineering solutions across agricultural value chains.
NIRSAL”s latest intervention in promoting the adoption of mechanized farming follows the collaborative NIRSAL Comprehensive Agricultural Mechanization Program (NCAMP), developed and deployed in collaboration with Machines and Equipment Corporation Africa (MECA) and NASENI.
Beyond NIRSAL’s collaboration with NASENI, NIRSAL’s optimized operating system embeds end-to-end mechanization in all of its activities with smallholder farmers nationwide.
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