The IITA Digital Delivery Working team led by virologist and Head of the Germplasm Health Unit at IITA–CGIAR, Lava Kumar, met with the Commissioner of Agriculture in Nigeria’s southwestern Ogun State, Dr Adeola Odedina, to present a report on the progress on the development of Ogun State Information Management System (OGFIMS).
The project, commissioned as part of the Ogun State Economic Transformation Project (OGSTEP) of the State’s Ministry of Agriculture, is creating a digital agricultural information system that will register farmers, service providers, and other stakeholders while undertaking a baseline survey among farmers in the State. This digitalization initiative is part of Ogun State’s move towards improving service provisioning to the agricultural sector.
The IITA team met with Dr Odedina in his Abeokuta office, along with the OGSTEP team, led by Dr Oluseyi Olugbire and IITA BASICS-II Project Lead and leader of the OGSTEP project on Value Chain Development Firm (VCDF), Lateef Sanni.
Sanni said that OGFIMS would leverage the ongoing registrations of value chain actors from the VCDF project in six local government areas of the State for validation.
Dr Olugbire discussed farmer registration plans using OGFIMS and highlighted the progress made in establishing the OGFIMS control room within the Ministry buildings in Abeokuta.
The Commissioner expressed satisfaction with the team’s report while adding that his office is ready to give all the support required to ensure that the project impacts the smallholder farmers and service providers in the State.
The joint digital agriculture initiative between IITA and the Ogun State Ministry of Agriculture is part of the OGSTEP funded by the World Bank, aimed at supporting the State’s smallholder farmers by improving production efficiency and performance of the value chains concerning food crops, horticulture, and livestock.
While presenting samples of the mobile device that will be used for the farmer and stakeholder registration, Kumar stated that as part of the capacity development and technology transfer, IITA had trained three staff from the Ministry of Agriculture, Olanrewaju Dabiri, Olubukola Lawal, and Mosimiloluwa Onayiga. These staff will take charge of the day-to-day management of the OGFIMS platform hosted in the Ministry in Abeokuta.
The digital platform will meet the requirements of all the key stakeholders while serving as a one-stop place for vital information necessary for the planning and implementing development programs in the State, said Kumar. He expressed optimism about OGFIMS improving the efficiency and outreach of the OGSTEP mission.
The IITA delegation included IT and web developers—Busayo Ogunya, Alex Akinkuo, Victor Olayemi—and Communication Officer Timilehin Osunde.
Contributed by Timilehin Osunde and Lava Kumar
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