An international non-profit organisation, Development Gateway Incorporated (DG), through one of its programmes, Visualising Insights on Fertiliser for African Agriculture (VIFAA), has launched a dashboard for data on fertiliser utilisation in Nigeria.
DG researches data ecosystems to identify incentives and barriers to data use; builds technical tools to support data analysis, visualisation and management; and advises on data strategy and policy to strengthen data-driven decision making.
Speaking at the launch in Abuja, DG’s Operations Manager, Beverley Hatcher-Mbu, said the dashboard essentially “gathers key data on Nigerian fertiliser sector on price, consumption and products availability and makes it easy to use, easy to access and feeds the public; so anybody, be them in the private sector or public sector, can use it.”
Also speaking, Abdullahi Adamu, Chairman, Senate Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, represented by Vice, Bima Muhammad Enagi, said Nigeria should no longer be arguing whether 20-10-10 or 15-15-15 was better, adding that, “Those products in the past were imported to take advantage of economies of scale by filling a vessel overseas to have a generic NPK that could be used across all of our major cereal crops”
On his part, the Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Ernest Afolabi Umakhihe, said the ministry had been a key partner in the VIFAA programme since its inception.
Jason Nasiru
