The Nigeria Farmers and Agribusiness Awards (NFAA) has recognized IITA as the Best Agribusiness Support Research Institution in Nigeria for 2021. A delegation from the NFAA and the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) visited the Institute’s headquarters in Ibadan to present the award, considered one of the highest honors in the nation’s agricultural sector. The award celebrates IITA’s research for supporting agricultural production and entrepreneurship in the country.
In his welcome address, IITA Deputy Director General, Partnerships for Delivery (P4D), Kenton Dashiell, welcomed the team and gave them an overview of IITA’s agricultural research and development work. He highlighted the P4D directorate’s work, which ensures that “the good work of our scientists gets out to the people and organizations that need it.”
“We emphasize agribusiness and youth because we strongly believe these are two components that must be prioritized for agriculture to really change in Nigeria and all over Africa,” said Dashiell.
National Coordinator of the Africa Farming Project and leader of the delegation, Dr Bright Isaac Okwu, highlighted the importance of the awards in Nigeria. The NFAA is a collaboration between FMARD’s Agribusiness and Marketing Department and the Africa Farming Project. He said the Honorable Minister of Agriculture, Dr Mohammad Mahmood Abubakar, mandated them to come to IITA-HQ to present the award to the Institute officially.
Receiving the award, IITA Director General Dr Nteranya Sanginga thanked the award organizers for recognizing IITA’s hard work over the years. He said, apart from working with established agribusiness entrepreneurs, IITA encourages youth participation in agriculture through various interventions as Africa’s farmers have been mostly of the older generation.
Sanginga highlighted the success of the Start Them Early Program (STEP), IITA’s intervention for primary and secondary school-age children, which it implements in DR Congo, Kenya, and Nigeria. He noted that the Oyo State Governor, HE Seyi Makinde, has adopted it as a model for the State after seeing it yield positive results in the pilot phase.
He applauded Okwu and his Africa Farming Project team for their shared passion for youth progression in agribusiness and the entire agriculture value chain. He expressed his openness to future collaboration to increase agribusiness opportunities in the nation.
The delegation included two winners of the agribusiness pageants—Miss Feeds and Nutrition, Esther Boluwatife Adeyemi and Miss Poultry and Livestock, Ifeoma Favour Obinna, who also won the overall Miss Agribusiness Nigeria prize.
Contributed by Uzoma Agha
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