FG, USAID Projects Implementation Impact Of MSME’s Extension Activities

The Extension Activity which started in 2020, provides access to agro-inputs and services and disseminate extension messaging to the smallholder farmers through its partnership with the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs).

It works with 311 MSMEs who commercialize the most impactful practices and incorporate extension messaging to reach farmers, enhance the volume of transactions and grow their business.

The 311 MSMEs were able to provide inputs and extension services on most impactful practices/improved agricultural practices to 2,021,468 (69% males and 33% women and 31% youth) smallholder farmers and increased productivity and income of the farmers by more than 100%.

Speaking during the workshop, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Senator Abubakar Kyari said the workshop is an avenue to share the success stories, experiences and lessons from the extension activities.

“This event, jointly hosted by the USAID Agricultural Extension Activity and Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security provides a platform to share successes, experiences, and lessons from the pluralistic extension service delivery approaches and aims to foster national-level scaling pathways and partnerships”

The minister who was represented by the Director Federal Department of Agricultural Extension Services Dr. Deola-Tayo Lordbanjou said the extension activities have helped farmers tackle existing and emerging extension challenges while providing access to the market.

“They jointly identified several most impactful agricultural practices as business solutions for the farmers, trained MSMEs and through coaching, transformed them into extension delivery firms”

“The parties also jointly promoted market aligned business solutions through the Agricultural Development Programmes and the States’ Ministries of Agriculture, to resolve systematic challenges in extension services for smallholder farmers” He added.

He called for scaling up of the USAID the Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension and Advisory Services Activity (‘Extension Activity’) in the country.

The representative of the USAID mission Director, Mr. Maurice Ogutu said the programme in its four years of implementation has been able to facilitate access to finance and technology while enabling them to adopt improved techniques.

 Mr. Ogutu noted the collaboration with MSME’s was also able to provide agro-input support for over 3 million Nigerian farmers.

“This partnership has also facilitated access to finance and technology and has enabled smallholder farmers to adopt improved techniques and access financial services and markets”

“To date, USAID has collaborated with micro, small and medium enterprises, agro-input suppliers and financial institutions to provide over three million Nigerian farmers with better incomes and market access, while leveraging more than 340 million U.S. dollars in private sector funds to increase productivity and incomes of smallholder farmers” he added.

According to Ogutu, the ratio of extension worker to farmer stands at one to 10,000, which limits access to farmers, adding that the collaboration has been able to deliver extension services to over 1.6 million smallholder farmers.

“The historically, agricultural extension in Nigeria has struggled to drive food security and economic growth, primarily due to high farmer-to-extension-agent ratio. Currently, it is 10,000 farmers to one extension agent, which is a big, humongous task”.

He said “This limits farm ability access, the advisory services they need to increase productivity. To address this gap, USAID and our partners developed and implemented (4:47) a private sector extension delivery model. This model engaged more than 300 micro, small and medium enterprises, delivering extension messaging to more than 1.6 million smallholder farmers”.

For the project Director for the USAID feed the future agriculture extension and advisory services activity Mr. Jean-Pierre Rousseau, the project has improved the adoption of technologies by farmers.

“By providing market-aligned and market responsive business solutions, or most impactful practices, to smallholder farmers we have been able to realize farmer adoption rates of promoted practices and technologies of upwards of 70%”

He said through the activities of the MSMEs they have rolled out input credit models that have generated over 95% repayment rates, and facilitated the flow of over 67 billion Naira in financing to smallholder farmers.

Mr. Rouseau noted that Extension is more than about just information dissemination; “It is about building the business ecosystem for farmers to be competitive market actors. It is about farmers accessing markets. It is about farmers making profits to safeguard their futures”.