B/Haram: Over 200,000 farmers benefit from IFAD projects in Borno 

The Borno State Government has said no fewer than 200,000 farmers have benefited from the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) projects as a result of improvements in the security situation in the state.

The State Programme Manager, Agricultural Development Programme (ADP), Darman Mohammed, stated this during the regional consultative workshops in preparation for Country Strategy Opportunity Programmes (COSOP) Nigeria’s 2024-2029 designed for northeast region stakeholders held in Maiduguri on Thursday.

He said although insurgency in more than a decade had no doubt affected farmers in terms of lack of access to farmland due to fear of landmines and being abducted by insurgents, security and agricultural activities had improved greatly in the state.

“The projects had recorded a lot of success in terms of increase in crop production, the income of farmers and food security.

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“Not less than 200,000 farmers have benefited from IFAD projects in the state. The security has improved and farmers are moving into the hinterland to cultivate.

“IFAD wants to bring a new project to the Borno State on the value chain, so they want to look at the past projects that were implemented here and to know the challenges and success.

“It is not easy to cover the whole state due to security challenges but I had greatly improved now,” Mohammed said

Also speaking, the Financial Inclusion Specialist of the Country Programme Advisory team for IFAD in Nigeria, Yusuf Haliru, said the workshops were aimed at chatting ways forward with the stakeholders at regional levels.

He added that the workshops would avail them to get their inputs on how agricultural interventions should take place in Nigeria from 2024-2029, saying the country remains the biggest portfolio of IFAD projects in the whole of Africa.

“We are going to add innovation to the agricultural sector, we are involving the farmers directly on how to things in a new approach to former things and new things we have to do,” he said.