By Fatima Muraina

|

The Federal Government has disclosed plans to develop the country’s agricultural sector using digital technologies, to increase productivity  improve food security and  encourage youths to venture into agribusiness.

According to the government, this would be done through a digital farming, planned mass agricultural programme that would make available between 20,000 to 100,000 new farmlands to  farmers in each state across the country.

Specifically,  the Director-General/CEO of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Kashifu Inuwa, disclosed this at the closing ceremony of a five-day digital farming training for students of Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta.

Represented by the Director of Information Technology Infrastructure  solution of the agency. Dr Usman Gambo, the Director-General said the Nigeria government would provide job  opportunities for five million farmers in the country.

He said, “what we have done in NITDA is to change the narrative by coming up with initiatives  that try to integrate digital  technologies and innovations gradually into agriculture through the National Adopted village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) and other digital agricultural initiatives.

“The development will support the digitization of the agricultural sector to address our obvious challenges, exploit the opportunities and accelerate economic growth.

“This is in line with the Nigeria Economic sustainability plan  (NESP) and the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy (NDEPS) of the Federal  Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy (MFoCDE) “.

Inuwa stressed that the Federal Government takes agriculture  as the mainstay of economic recovery diversification, and job creation.

“The plan proposed a mass agriculture programme to bring 20,000 to 100,000 hectares of  new farmland under cultivation in every state of the federation.

The aim is to create five million  job opportunities , directly and indirectly spanning the entire agricultural value chains, from ‘farm to table’, he added.

Meanwhile, he noted that the development can only be achieved by incentivising and engaging millions of Nigerians in farming and agro-processing.