In order to add more impetus to the progress already made in the agriculture and rural development agenda of the present administration, the Dutch government has earmarked 20 million Euro to that effect.<\/p>\n
This was made public in Abuja when the United Nations Special Advocate for Inclusive Finance for Development, Princess Maxima of Netherlands visited the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr. Akinwumi Adesina during which she charged the country to take seriously the issue of implementing the strategy in order to add to the already existing development in the sector.<\/p>\n
While announcing the gesture, Hans De Brabander, the Dutch Deputy Ambassador to Nigeria, who accompanied the UN envoy said, they are ready to support Nigeria\u2019s initiative in value chain addition in all the identified crops as well as contribute significant amount of expertise in several areas.<\/p>\n
Dr. Brabander mentioned the areas to include, agro processing, storage, holti-culture among several others.<\/p>\n
Earlier in her remarks, the UN Representative who said she was in the country to witness the formal launch of a programme created by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), maintained that implementation of the financial inclusion strategy was key to economic development but added that implementation cannot be accomplished by the CBN alone.<\/p>\n
Princess Maxima said she called on the CBN to work in conjunction with the different states, the ministry of agriculture, and the communications ministry, that for example would allow to get mobile phone banking into the different states in the rural area.<\/p>\n
In his welcome address,\u00a0 Dr. Adesina informed the UN envoy that, at the assumption of office the administration set clear policies and programmes that will put the\u00a0 nation on the path of economic growth and development stating that with particular reference to agriculture, adequate measures have been put in place to accommodate the entire farming population.<\/p>\n
According to the minister, agriculture was carried out in Nigeria as a development project but the trend has since been reversed to make it have a global outlook where\u00a0 the sector is wearing a business orientation pointing out that,\u00a0 in the course, many\u00a0 farmers and rural people have been affected positively.<\/p>\n
The minister further said, the vast farming population has been mobilized\u00a0 using mobile handsets devices to distribute inputs as well as a shock absorber risk sharing fund domiciled with the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, among other things.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In order to add more impetus to the progress already made in the agriculture and rural development agenda of the present administration, the Dutch government has earmarked 20 million Euro…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5408,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n