Heifer Nigeria, a global non-profit institution, is collaborating with the Nigeria in Diaspora Commission (NiDCOM) to link diaspora investments to Nigerian agribusinesses.
Country Director, Heifer Nigeria, Rufus Idris, said that the organisation is implementing strategies to attract diaspora investments and innovations into Nigeria’s agricultural sector in order to boost economic growth,
adding that his organisation is working to bridge the investment gap in the agricultural sector with funds from Diaspora Nigerians.
He said: “For us we know that there’s a huge deficit in terms of investment in the agricultural sector. So, what we are doing is that, we are investing heavily in different aspects of the agricultural sector in the country’’.
“We also believe that remittances from Diaspora Nigerians are also very huge. For instance, President Muhammadu Buhari once said that there’s about $25 billion remittances from Nigerians in Diaspora, that’s about 80 per cent of Nigeria’s annual budget and about six per cent of our GDP.
“That’s a huge amount of money. So, what we are doing here is try to see how we can collaborate with other organizations that can help us channel Diaspora investment into the agricultural sector to address areas where we have problems and such investments can help unlock those areas.”
He said his team is looking at different sub-sectors in the value-chain where Nigeria had comparative advantage. “For us, we are looking at sectors in the value chain where we can address the issue of food self-sufficiency.
“For instance in the rice value chain, the tomato value chain, poultry value chain and key other areas as well, we want to see how we can help improve and increase production, productivity and competitiveness and also bring in technology to help scale the impact and contribution within that sector. We are piloting collaboration with Hello Tractor that’s deploying the ‘Pay as you Go’ tractor model.
“It’s a way you get more tractor service providers to own tractors closer to farmers, so that they can make tractors available to smallholder farmers. “Not just tractor itself, other components that come with the tractor like harrower, harvester, planters and any other component that are in short supply in the country as well.”
The Country Director said the organization is very interested in the livestock space in Nigeria, which according to him is full of opportunities, adding that Heifer has done livestock transformational programs across many countries.
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