By Raymond Benson
The Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises – Niger Delta (LIFE-ND) project, an initiative of the Federal Government of Nigeria, has embarked on Joint Supervision Mission exercise in Ondo State.
The 4th Joint Supervision Mission mission which began on June 25 and expected to last till July 19, is a biannual activity that involves the coming together of the critical stakeholders in the project.
These include the implementing agency – Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the co-implementing agency – the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC) and the donor – International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
The goal is to review the performance of the project across the various commodities of intervention and also give technical support.
It is also to afford other stakeholders in the agricultural space an opportunity to see real time how the project is performing in achieving the set goal of empowering 25,500 youths and women.
These beneficiaries are drawn from the six states of Abia, Bayelsa, Cross River, Delta, Edo and Ondo.
The team led by Mrs. Adeline Muheebwa a gender and agriculture specialist, has highly experienced consultants in the agricultural sectors involved in the exercise.
The climax of the mission is the assessment of the project performance through a combination of field data gathered in the course of the exercise and very detailed professional desk work by the cream of development experts.
In Ondo, the team visited the beneficiaries in their various agribusiness ventures which include Cassava, Cocoa, Aquaculture and Poultry all along the agricultural value chain.
In all the sites visited, it was observed that Environment and Climate Change, Nutrition and Financial Inclusion were carefully mainstreamed.
LIFE-ND is a project designed to empower a critical mass of unemployed youths and women in the Niger Delta Region.
Under the technical supervision IFAD, the project has conscientiously over the period of five years created jobs in the agricultural sector by deploying the incubation model.
The model is such that unemployed youths interested in agriculture are capacitated under the business environment of an experienced master trainer who is an agribusiness expert in a particular agricultural commodity value chain.
The project focuses on seven key commodities – Cassava, Rice, Plantain, Oil Palm, Plantain, Aquaculture, and Poultry.
These are spread across the value chains of Production, Processing and Marketing.
