Norway has committed $1.4 million to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nation (FAO) in Nigeria to help address food insecurity in conflict-affected areas of the North-East.
The funding will enable FAO to expand agricultural recovery efforts, provide technical support, and distribute essential farming resources like fertilizers and seedlings.
Speaking during the agreement signing ceremony at the Norwegian Embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, the Norwegian Ambassador to Nigeria, Svein Biera said Norway was able to secure additional funding support for FAO’s initiatives in the North east because it believes in what the organization is doing in the region.
Beira noted that with the additional funding, FAO will be able to continue with its activities in providing the much needed support in reviving the area.
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“Some countries have been forced for various reasons to cut their aid budgets and that means that even tougher priorities are taking place both in Nigeria and in many other countries. And in this situation I’m proud and very happy to say that Norway has been able to find additional funds for the FAO in Nigeria to help feed the people who need help in several states”
“So this is money that will be put to good use in Nigeria and I know what FAO is doing because I’ve been following Kofi and also other representatives from the FAO headquarters in Rome to areas where aid is needed because of the humanitarian situation and I know that I’ve seen that FAO is carrying out the work of not only making sure people get the food they need but also training them to be better at producing their own food. In that way the aid is more sustainable and that is something we like” He added.
Reacting, the FAO Representative in Nigeria and ECOWAS Dominique Koffy Kouacou said the additional funding would go a long way in boosting FAO’s initiative in the North East.
Kouacou recounted the success of previous support noting that it helped support houses in the region through the different initiatives.
“This project that today we are here to this addendum, we started this project four years ago. During this implementation of the project we are able to support almost more than 700,000 people in the northeast in Borno-Adamawa region states to be able to address several agriculture and to be able to do several different activities. I want to recall that we support the farmers to boost the productions to be able to address the food security”
He noted that the support is timely as it would help FAO provide farming support during the 2025 farming season.
“This addendum and I want to say again particularly in this very difficult global funding situation will really help FAO to address the food insecurity in the country”
“And I want to take an example. This year in January FAO we plan to address to assist more than 50,000 farmers because of the funding contract we are able to assist only 25,000 so only 50 percent but with this additional funds mainly on this rainy coming rainy season we’ll be able at least to increase the number of farmers to 25,000 to almost 30 32,000 farmers that additional farmers that will be able to support in terms of seeds in terms of fertilizer and to help them to produce more”
The the FAO Representative appreciated the Norwegian government for their funding in support of the vulnerable people in the North East over the years.