In a 5-day empowerment program held at Al-Qalam University in Katsina, Katsina State, the Federal Government, through the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), provided smart agriculture materials to beneficiaries of the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA).
The NAVSA Program was created to hasten the creation of large numbers of jobs, economic diversification, and growth. It also makes it easier to integrate digital technologies and innovations into agricultural processes and practices in order to significantly increase productivity, improve food security, and ensure environmentally friendly agricultural practices.
In this edition, the Federal Government has improved green energy-powered smart brooding to enhance the survival rate of broilers, a smart irrigation system to support a year-long production, and a soil nutrient monitoring system to support information-driven farming on a demo land.
This is in addition to other benefits such as smart device, N100,000 seed fund, AgricTech training/capacity building, connectivity (Internet and CUG), NAVSA Platform, financial inclusion through digital wallets, e-Extension and insurance services, continuous reinvestment model opportunities and Unmanned Area Vehicle (UAV)/Drone for smart farm.
Speaking during the closing ceremony on Friday, the Director General, National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, who was represented by Acting Director, Digital Economy Development of the Agency, Engr. Salisu Kaka, stated that, “Agriculture remains one of the critical sectors of Nigeria’s economy.
“This is evident in the policies of the current administration led by President Muhammadu Buhari. Every economic, developmental and social policy gives agriculture priority.”
Inuwa said the NAVSA Empowerment will enhance agriculture value chain, create new value and opportunities through new business models and services, and ultimately enable the creation of millions of jobs while taking the people out of poverty and enabling economic growth and diversification.
“With our potential in arable land size and youthful population, modernising the agricultural sector can change the narrative and multiply the contribution of the sector to the national GDP in many folds.
“Unfortunately, the sector is the least digitised in the country. It has been proved that any digitised business has the potential to grow exponentially.”
“We hold a social contract to ensure IT drives every aspect of life and contributes to every community and national development as a whole.
“In line with our mandates, we carry out digital technology-driven interventions in any industry and sector of the economy across the country.
“This is evident in all digitised economic sectors of the world such as the Bank, financial services, media and entertainment among others. Undoubtedly, digitisation of the economic sectors has proved to be the game changer for economic transformation across the globe,” he explained.
He said it is believed that if the agriculture sector is properly managed and enhanced, it would be a genuine means of eradicating poverty, improving people’s standard of living, diversifying the economy and creating prosperity for Nigerians.
He further said, “We all have it as a duty to ensure agriculture is practised as a business and not a way of life as usual.
“There is a need to modernise agricultural practices in the country. In view of this conviction and in line with its mandates of universal IT access and integration into every sector of the economy, NITDA has designed a digital technology and ecosystem-driven innovation to address most of our challenges in the agriculture sector.
