The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) has said that the Value Change Development Programme (VCDP) will promote and influence climate change adaptation among smallholder farmers.
The IFAD Country Director in Nigeria, Ms Dede Ekoue, stated this during the 5th Implementation Support Mission of the FGN/IFAD Value Chain Development Programme Wrap-up workshop in Abuja.
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“I would like to share our solidarity with all the farmers that are affected by the heavy floods.
“We know it is a difficult moment and as IFAD, we are highly concerned. So, we will be discussing with our partner, how we can maybe support with the existing resource because this is something that is important.
“It is also really important to highlight this and it reminds us also that climate change is an important matter. So thankfully VCDP is already positioned to influence and to promote adaptation to climate change,” she said.
Ms Ekoue thanked the federal government for its commitment to the implementation of the value chain program in nine states.
The country director said the implementation support mission was aimed to assess the achievements of its objectives and targets and also to assess the challenges “so that we can draw a path, a trajectory for accelerated implementation, and also appraise if the mission was very successful in implementing the full programme.”
Dr Fatima Aliyu, who is the National Programme Coordinator of the value chain development project, which focuses on rice and cassava, said the event was to examine the implementation status of the project in order to ensure compliance with the programme’s objectives.
She said the mission was also to look at areas where the project is doing well and where it fell below expectations.
“They [mission team] have seen those things we are doing so well and what we are not doing so well. They have interacted with all the stakeholders in the states and I’m sure they will give us recommendations on the way forward in order to achieve the objective of the programme, ” she said.
The Director, Project Coordinating Unit of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Peter Kush, said IFAD has contributed a lot to helping many rural farmers across the country.
He called for more collaborations to help more farmers in Nigeria.
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