Published By Ademola Orunbon
A Deutsch Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), German Corporation for International Cooperation, in partnership with TAORAN has trained over 27 groups of farmers in Ogun State within months.
Mr. Sunday Idahosa, the Local Economic Development Advisor for GIZ-SEDIN, disclosed this in Abeokuta during the week.
Mr. Idahosa said that the training started from April 27 to 29 and that 27 groups of farmers had already been trained in different capacities and their field of specializations, noting that majority of the groups including Business Development Committee (BDCs), Women group, Cooperatives/BMOs, to mention but a few.
Idahosa hinted that many of these groups were facing with numerous barriers which negatively impacted their potential to achieve optimum institutional outcomes.
“In fact to effectively deliver services to their members and community, and to their contributions to employment and improved income of members MSMEs, they need to be well trained and informed of basic needs to function optimally, which we are doing now, believing to be expecting good outputs from our Women Farmers”, Idahosa said
He said that it was very imperative for market associations, BDCs and Local Economic Development (LED) fora to exist sustainably and function efficiently, especially in driving local economic development which considered as a veritable means to mitigating the challenges of collapse after the withdrawal of SEDIN support and stoppage of SEDIN activities.
A consultant/facilitator from TAORAN Global Resources, Jci Sen. Henry Adedokun, said it was imperative to develop the women’s farmers for proper implementation of their products, saying that it would serve for good and proper organization which could be facing woman farmers in the country.
He said that the organization was also involved in the growth and promotion of employment in Nigeria programme, saying improving income distribution and strength start-up would continue to be its priority.
He further said that enhancement of entrepreneurial skills, fostering financial inclusion and promotion of job opportunities would not be undermined, as developing value chains, supporting digital literary and accessing to finance and investment was among its training aspects.
The National President, Coalescence of Women Farmers Association of Nigeria (COWFAN), Mrs. Tai Gabriel Olaiya, said that the training was timely and eye opener, noting that she was highly impressed with the level of training which would positively affected the women farmers association in Ogun State and Nigeria as whole.
She called on Nigeria government to contribute meaningful in helping Women in the country, saying that many of their Women groups were earnestly and hopefully to work, but lack of modern merchandise farming which negatively affecting them and discouraging them to key into farming.
She said moral decadence, idleness, poverty and lack of government intervention in women’s farming contributed to shortage of food supply chains, saying most their members were ready to processing agricultural output into varieties of consumable foods.
Among the trained farmers includes Coalescence of Women Farmers Association of Nigeria (COWFAN), which were also in different farming, like cashew farming, cassava farming, watermelon farming, local rice farming, plantain/Banana farming and many more.