The ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) has lamented that smallholder female farmers have access to less than 23 per cent of the existing credit facilities, and only 4.77 per cent access to agricultural insurance.
The Country Director, AAN, Ene Obi, said this on Wednesday in Abuja during a national dialogue on Nigeria’s performance on the National Non-State Actors’ (NSA’s) Dissemination Workshop for the 3rd Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) Biennial Review (BR) Report exercise.
She also said while the government is making efforts to improve the space for more Public Private Partnerships (PPP) arrangements in Nigeria’s agriculture sector, smallholder women farmers’ access to such schemes remains below 27%.
She also said that they collected a data/information through the VABKIT that reflected the lived realities of smallholder women farmers across the 36 states and the FCT, which shows that nationwide, smallholder women farmers currently have only 18 percent access to processing facilities, 16.60 percent access to storage facilities, 13.50 percent access to off-takers/access to markets, 9.60 percent access to transportation for agricultural produce, and 42.30 percent access to trainings.
She said, “On Extension Services, smallholder women farmers have access to only 5.26 percent farm demonstrations and 19.47 percent farmers field schools.”
The official said for Nigeria to meet the 2014 Malabo Declaration Commitments, governments should commit 10% of their annual budget to the agriculture sector to grow it by 6%.
Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Ernest Umakhihe, said the Malabo programme was reviewed in 2014 at the meeting of African Heads of States in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea that gave birth to seven commitments.
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