South-East: IFAD organises workshop to boost food production

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has organised regional consultation on the redesign of a new Country Strategic Opportunities Programme (COSOP) to boost food production in the South-East.

In an opening remark, Dr Edward Isiwu, the State Programme Coordinator, Enugu State Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP), said that IFAD wanted to use the gathering to strategise on the process of collating ideas on inputs of key consultants and stakeholders, especially the farmers, on improving agricultural system in the zone.

COSOP is part of IFAD’s efforts to provide rural farmers in the zone better support to enhance food security, poverty reduction and wealth generation.

The participating states in the workshop, which held in Enugu, included Anambra, Ebonyi, and Enugu states.

In a speech, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Natural Resources in the state, Dr Matthew Idu, spoke on the importance of ideas collation from the stakeholders towards improving agricultural system in the zone.

“The importance of this workshop is focused on getting ideas to build a roadmap and strategies toward developing the key objectives and development results to be pursued within the time frame.”

He thanked IFAD for organising the workshop which, he would help to support the region on agricultural development in the next five years.

The IFAD Country Consultant, Nkiruka Okonkwo, further said that the workshop was intended to examine the current COSOP and commence the preparation for the new COSOP.

According to her, the workshop will provide opportunity for the stakeholders to highlight their priorities on improving agric system in the region.

She listed the strategic objectives for the workshop to include identify key strategies and entry points for mainstreaming Gender and Youth, Nutrition, Environment and actions against climate change.

Others include having Financial and People With Disabilities into the new COSOP, begining from 2024 to 2029 at the state and regional levels and identifying innovations, ICT development and key successes for addressing identified needs and scaling up the implementation of priorities.

“It will be used also to identify challenges, fragility issues (for instance, security), gaps, opportunities and best practices for promoting agriculture and food systems transformation at the state and regional levels,” she said.

The Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Dr Ben Ezema, applauded VCDP for its achievements so far in the three states of intervention.

Ezema appealed to IFAD to expand the intervention to other local government areas that had the potential to produce rice and cassava as well as other cash crops grown in the area, such as oil palm, grains and legumes.

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