The Federal Government with the assistance of the UN Development Programme (UNDP) has secured funding to enhance long-term sustainability and resilience of food production systems in the country.
National Project Coordinator, UNDP, Mohammed Usman, said this at a meeting of UNDP officials during the presentation of reports to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on Friday in Abuja.
He said that the funding was secured through the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to implement a project in Nigeria called the UNDP Global Environment Facility Integrated Approach Programme on Food Security (UNDP-GEF-IAP-FS).
Usman said that the move would foster sustainability and resilience in Nigeria agricultural production.
He added that it would build greater community resilience to climate risks and other shocks that drive food insecurity.
According to him, the project has been implemented in seven states across three Savannah zones of the North such as Benue, Nasarawa, Adamawa, Gombe, Kano, Jigawa and Katsina.
He said that the project since 2018 to 2021 had achieved tremendous result by reaching out to 81,106 farmers.
Usman added that the number was up of 42, 205 males and 38,901 females who were the direct beneficiaries and 835, 391 indirect beneficiaries.
He stated that one of the projects addressed the policy and institutional challenges that characterised the Nigerian Agricultural and Food Security Landscape.
The project coordinator said that one of the main challenges of the project implementation was lack of payment of counterpart fund by both the Federal and participating states.
He said that this had limited the project’s ability to reach the proposed target beneficiaries and restricted it from up scaling its activities as planned.
Dr Ernest Umakhihe, Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, commended UNDP for its unwavering support.
He promised to also raise the profile of the project and implementation process that would fast track result.