NIRSAL educates Kano agro-stakeholders on value chain benefits

The Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has organized a five-day training workshop for agricultural value chain stakeholders in Kano for value chain optimum benefits.  NIRSAL’s Head of Project Monitoring, Reporting and Remediation Office, Alhaji Babagana Mustapha, revealed that the essence of the workshop was to build the capacity of stakeholders to […]

The Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) has organized a five-day training workshop for agricultural value chain stakeholders in Kano for value chain optimum benefits.

 NIRSAL’s Head of Project Monitoring, Reporting and Remediation Office, Alhaji Babagana Mustapha, revealed that the essence of the workshop was to build the capacity of stakeholders to achieve optimum benefits in the sector.

 He added that the workshop was in line with one of the five components of NIRSAL, which is technical assistance by means of capacity building for stakeholders.

 “This is to update the knowledge and technology of the movers and shakers of agric business for them to be able to explore new ways of doing the business. It apparent that the global population is growing and somebody has to feed them. And to achieve that, we can’t continue doing things the way we were doing before,” he said.

 Similarly, Kano state commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources, Dr Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna, suggested that the anchor borrower programme should be tied to the entire agric value chain, so that at the end, there will be multiple collateral for loan secured.

 “The state faced serious problems with anchor borrower, because when we served as guarantor for farmers for the loan, only four out of thousands came forward to pay back. It took serious effort to convince farmers to pay their loans. We have seen considerable changes now however, as they are gradually paying back,” he said

Farmer associations, input producers, suppliers, distributors and marketers took part in the event.