A one-day engagement of Agribusiness actors and clubs, has taken place in Lagos, with endorsement of the Inclusive Agribusiness Model of 2 Scale Project for Nigeria to fully overcome challenges related to availability of nourishing food.
The stakeholders at the forum with the theme: ‘Inclusive Agribusiness in Nigeria : A Public – Private Dialogue’, noted that the model had enhanced actors in the value chain, cutting across primary production, supply chain to market accessibility.
2SCALE an acronym for Toward Sustainable Clusters in Agribusiness through Learning in Entrepreneurship is one of Africa’s largest incubator and accelerator programs for inclusive agribusiness.
The event was the climax of two phases of thirteen years of purposeful and verifiable intervention of 2 Scale Project in the Agribusiness Value Chain in Nigeria.
The Programme Director, Marian Diboma, listed challenges ranging from
climate change, political instability, insecurity, COVID-19, supply chain disruptions due to the Russia-Ukraine war, to market access issues, but with invaluable lessons that have strengthened and improved the intervention strategies.
According to Digboma, in this final year of 2SCALE, the focus is firmly on ensuring sustainability and continuity beyond 2024 in Nigeria and across partner countries, through Strengthening local ownership, institutionalizing the 2SCALE Approach, Knowledge exchange and legacy building, Private sector engagement and Strengthening multi-stakeholder alliances.
Giving a breakdown of the project, the 2 Scale Country Team Lead, Maxwell Olitsa, explained that launched in 2012 and funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the program has operated across
more than 15 African countries, working through public-private partnerships to support
small and medium enterprises, farmer groups, and local entrepreneurs to produce and deliver
nutritious food to local and regional markets, especially for base-of-the-pyramid consumers.
On his part, the Consul General of Netherlands in Nigeria, Michel Deleen, expressed delight at the successful outcome of the thirteen years of an over one hundred ten million Euros investment facilitated by 2SCALE Project to professionalise farming across the value chain, to achieve nourishing food surplus in Nigeria and nine other countries.
Deleen while lauding the desire of President Bola Tinubu to make an emergency on Food Sufficiency, stated that agriculture is a major bilateral agreement with Nigeria and his country will continue to support Agribusiness as long as the enabling environment is provided by government for investors and entrepreneurs to thrive.
Also speaking, the Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Ayo Sotirin, said the Bank was poised to adapt effective strategies of the 2 Scale Project to fulfill the mandate of the President Bola Tinubu administration which has already provided a one point five trillion naira fund for food sufficiency and poverty eradication.
Representative of the Institute of Agribusiness Management Nigeria, IAMN, Ayo Olorunfemi expressed the readiness of the Institute to sustain the ideals of 2SCALE Project through modules such as certification of businesses that embraced inclusive compliant practices and standards especially as it involves women and youths.
Yemisi Iranloye, CEO of Psaltery International Company Limited, an agro-processing company, which is a major beneficiary of the 2SCALE Project in 2014, gives insight to how it has impacted the growth of local cassava farmers from 150 to 3,500 within three years among other achievements. She appealed to the federal government to take a cue from the strategy of 2SCALE Project to implement its Credit Interventions through organised operational companies to access the original smallholder farmers.
Highpoints of the Public – Private Dialogue was the premiere of the Food Soldiers Documentary on unsung heroes working everyday to nourish communities and launch of a magazine in the thirteen years 2 Scale Project in Nigeria.
Reporting by Abiola Peters