Minister distributes digital farming implements to 140 Gombe youths

The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Isah Ali Pantami, has distributed Smart devices, fertilizers, Pesticides, as well as other digital items and 100 thousand naira each to 140 youths in Gombe State.

The programme has been conceived under the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture, NAVSA, empowerment programme, to be implemented by the National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA and supervised by the Ministry of Communication and Digital Economy.

Speaking during the distribution ceremony and the commencement of a one-week training for the beneficiaries, Dr. Pantami said it was necessary for Nigeria to embrace digital Agriculture to enable the country address the challenge of future hunger.

The Minister encouraged the beneficiaries, who were picked from across the state, to learn from many countries that have made progress in agriculture by embracing digital agriculture, which was yielding huge successes of bumper harvests.

He said a small country like the Netherlands, with a population of either Lagos or Kano States, had been the second leading country in the export of agricultural produce.

Dr. Pantami explained that digitization had had a huge impact on economies and societies, by reducing unemployment and improving the quality of life and consequently boosting access to knowledge.

“ICT sector is a key enabler of every sector, it is making other sectors more productive because there were so many model ICT that is being used to promote Agriculture,” Dr. Pantami said.

He said the Federal Government was providing all the facilities needed for the training of the youths across the country on smart agriculture, stressing that the training will continue in other places to ensure a significant number of people benefit.

On his part, the Director-General of NITDA, Dr. Kashifu Abdullahi, said the application of digital technology and innovations in agriculture would attract youthful population into the sector and create digital business models across the Agricultural value chain.

Dr. Abdullahi said the programme would also create millions of jobs, increase productivity as well as increase the contribution of Agriculture to the country’s GDP, as well as make Nigeria a leading Nation in food security and exporter of standard Agricultural produce to the world.

He said the programme was initiated to systematically woo farmers across the country into adopting digital agriculture by equipping them with necessary skills that will make Nigeria a leading Nation in Smart Agriculture.

“‘The goal is to provide Nigeria farmers with means to showcase their farm produce in the digital world market”, Dr. Abdullahi he said.

The items distributed to the beneficiary farmers include a tablet phone device, provided to access a platform created by NITDA for all information needed for the farm.
The Gombe Team Leader of the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture, Dr. Taofeeq Yekini, said Digital Agriculture was like the normal agriculture, except that the processes were facilitated using information technology, which will be the first phase of the programme.

Dr. Yekini said the every one of the tablet devices had been mapped, hence every information on the farm could be accessed from the device, such as soil condition, weather, harvesting and many other technical procedures in the farm will be monitored and supervised on the farmer and his farm to serve as a guide.