In line with its mandate to enhance food security and facilitate higher productivity by making impactful interventions by addressing challenges facing the agricultural sector of Nigeria from a probusiness point of view NIRSAL has developed a partnership to implement mechanised agricultural projects and activities in Nigeria
NIRSAL Plc. is partnering with RIELA Projects GNA Limited a German agricultural processing and technology company that provides complete value chain solutions to farmers, cooperatives, government agencies and private industry globally to achive this.
The two organisations would cooperate in the technical areas of project scoping, project design, engineering, procurement and construction for projects (EPC) and Project maintenance/ management, with Riela providing the necessary technical support to investor-farmers, organized farmer groups and cooperatives, institutional and all other cooperate customers
The partnership will concentrate on harvest and post-harvest technology, agricultural processing, biomass, rural development and innovation with Riela supplying all post harvest processing machines, equipment or services to customers as will be agreed with NIRSAL and other stakeholders.
Reila would also provide comprehensive After Sales Service for any systems it supplies in Nigeria and work towards a 12-hour-back-to-work repair system.
Speaking at the signing of the MoU at NIRSAL Headquarters on Friday, February 9,2018, the Managing Director of NIRSAL Mr Aliyu Abdulhameed lamented that Nigeria loses about $9 billion (N2.7 trillion) annually because of post-harvest food losses.
Citing a joint finding by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO’s) Fact Sheet published in 2013 and NSPRI survey conducted in the six geo-political zones Mr Abdulhameed said that more than 51.3 metric tonnes of food are lost due to post-harvest food losses for all the agricultural products from the country.
He stressed that the MoU would complement other on-going efforts by NIRSAL to fix the broken Agricultural Value Chain given that this loss was much higher in rural communities that were in dire need of development because of inadequate presence of basic facilities and infrastructure
He added that if Nigeria must achieve food security, the stakeholders in the post-harvest value chain must synergize to safe-keeping after post harvest exercise that is why NIRSAL is taking the lead by creating the handshake of trust between Agriculture and Finance using innovation and technology to create catalytic initiatives.
For its Part RIELA said that the organisation had worked hard with years of post-harvest research experience and expertise, developing post-harvest technologies.
He said that the partnership with NIRSAL would help add value to agricultural production in Nigeria by providing appropriate mechanisation and infrastructural facilities and equipment for produce after harvest. It is projected that if post-harvest loss is tackled, Nigeria’s GDP will increase by 15% from the current N18 trillion in (Q3,2017) to N20.73 trillion thereby increasing the contribution of the agricultural sector by 8.85% making the contributions to the nations GDP increase to 38 per cent from the current 29.15 contribution other things being constant.
