Self reliance: FG empowers 25,500 Niger Delta youths, women

The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security is stimulating empowerment of over 25,500 youths and women in agriculture entrepreneurship across the Niger Delta states.

The National Project Coordinator, Dr. Abiodun Sanni, while addressing newsmen at the weekend during the technical working session on Group Savings and Loan and Record/Bookkeeping in Owerri, Imo State capital, said that the working session under the Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises Niger Delta project was being funded by International Fund for Agriculture Development.

According to him, participants were drawn from across the six states of the Niger Delta.

“The project has participating states from Niger Delta, which would access the $60 million loan funded by IFAD. The project, which has two phases of six years, has a 12-year life span with phase one of six years, which started in 2019,” Sanni who was represented by his Technical Assistant, Mr Bunmi Ogunleye said.

“The six states that started in 2019 were Abia, Bayelsa, Ondo, Cross River, Edo, and Delta states. Imo, Akwa Ibom and Rivers were activated in 2024. So, the project is happening in nine states of the Niger Delta,” he added.

“The essence of the project is to empower youths and women in agriculture entrepreneurship for self-reliance and sustainability.

“The empowerment of the participating youths and women is being done across selected commodities of cassava, plantain, fish, rice, cocoa, oil palm and poultry.”

“The empowerment will be across the value chain which are production, processing and building their capacity to market the products. The training will further strengthen and build the capacity of selected few on proper record keeping and documentation in business, with the intent that they will step down the learning and cascade the training down the others for same pack of knowledge,” Sanni said.

“The people being trained are parts of the project. To participate in the project, one must be unemployed, underemployed and must be living in the rural communities.”

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