The Director-General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA), Kashifu Inuwa, has expressed the readiness of the agency to partner the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and other relevant stakeholders to address Nigeria’s food insecurity challenge.
Inuwa made this remark when he received representatives from USAID, led by the Senior Digital Advisor Bureau for Resilience, Environment, and Food Security, Josh Woodard, at the agency’s headquarters in Abuja.
According to him, the purpose of the USAID team’s visit is to have a thorough assessment of digital agriculture in Nigeria and how the two agencies can collaborate to explore the opportunities for improved food production in the country.
He said: “One of President Tinubu’s areas of focus is boosting agriculture to achieve food security, and at NITDA we were set up to develop the National IT Policy, and IT policy is not just about developing IT but developing IT to boost productivity across all critical sectors including agriculture.
“That is why we do a lot of initiatives in trying to see how we can build an agriculture Strategy with IT in mind and make it a more attractive business to the younger generation”, Inuwa added.
The Director-General said that NITDA had identified six emerging technologies that would aid in achieving food security in Nigeria.
He expatiated: “We have an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Strategy co-creation workshop going on, which started on Monday, where we are working with the ecosystem to develop a strategy on how to use AI in agriculture, health, education, and so on.
“We are working on how to use the Internet of Things (IoT) in agriculture for crop monitoring, soil monitoring, precision irrigation, climate monitoring livestock monitoring, and so on.
“We are working using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to facilitate pest detection, water control, yield assessment, and so on.
We are working on using Blockchain for the traceability of farm produce from farm to store, record keeping, quality assurance, and so on.
“We are working on using robotics to enhance productivity in agriculture in terms of automation of physical farm processing like weeding, harvesting, tractors, and many more.
“For additive manufacturing, we are working on using it to upscale our manufacturing industry in the Agricultural sector for the production of crop and soil monitoring devices, customised equipment, and many more”, Inuwa added.
On NITDA’s commitment to ensuring that Nigeria develops its digital offering in-country, he recalled that the Nigeria Startup Portal was launched during the week with over 12,000 startups registered so far, who would be labelled, after which they could have access to incentives.
Earlier in his remarks, the USAID team leader said that the meeting was convened to enable the agency have first-hand information on what Nigeria is doing in digital farming and identify how to enhance the integration of digital technology in agriculture.
Josh Woodard disclosed that USAID recently launched the Global Food Security Strategy for Nigeria (2024 -2029) in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, assuring that “we want to work with all stakeholders to ensure food security in Nigeria.”
During the meeting, the NITDA and USAID leaders discussed the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) in relation to its success so far, the expansion strategy the NITDA is adopting and a call on the USAID to be part of the initiatives.
