Venancia Wambua, the EOAI Project Manager (3rd from left in the foreground) and Geoffrey Langa’t, Project Accountant (2nd from left in the background) with the Nigerian team During the BvAT team’s Visit in Nigeria.
From 19th to 23rd September 2022, a BvAT team by Ms. Venancia Wambua, EOA-I Project Manager and Geoffrey Lang‘at, BvAT Accountant had a monitoring visit to the EOA-I partners in Nigeria. Among the partners visited were Association of Organic Agriculture Practitioners of Nigeria (NOAN) who are the Country Lead Organization (CLO), Kwara State University responsible for the project’s Research and Applied Knowledge pillar, Farmers Development Union (FADU) in charge of the Information, Communication and Extension pillar, Ibadan Go Organic responsible for the Value Chain and Market Development pillar.
The main objective of the visit was to check on the progress updates of the EOA-I Project by NOAN and its associate implementing partners in Nigeria.
On 23rd September, the BvAT team met with the Ajigode Farmers Organic Group in the University of Ibadan where two (2) groups of farmers were represented. The BvAT team was accompanied by the EOA-I National Coordinator, Dr. AdeOluwa Olugbenga and the M&E officer, Mr. Emmanuel Ogunlola. The Organic and Agroecological Agriculture Desk Officer of Oyo State was in attendance as well and appreciated the support by EOA-I to the Oyo State. He reported that the Ministry of Agriculture of Oyo State teaches farmers on innovation in organic agriculture practices. He noted that the vegetable products that are organic have become more popular and a market of organic products is organized at the University on a weekly basis.
The farmers are currently utilizing the University’s facilities for their farming organic produce. The benefits to farmers include well managed parcels of land with security from the University and access to the University Community markets and benefit from training and exposure to visitors.
Benefits to the University include giving back to the community through outreach activities, production of safe food for the University community and students’ access to farming land for their research studies.
The farmers mentioned some of the challenges they face and these included climate change challenges especially flooding which has been a great challenge and the farmers can only farm during the dry season. Production is also not enough due to limited availability of land while demand is very high. Accessibility to road network is a challenge to accessing products and the consumers can only access the products with ease during the dry season.
The farmers requested the EOA-I project to support in the establishment of an Organic demonstration farm, establishment of more sales outlets and access and purchase of organic inputs especially fertilizers. They also requested the University to avail land lying idle available to the farmers.
The BvAT team pledged to continue supporting the small-scale farmers in Nigeria through the ongoing EOA-I Initiatives and other initiatives that will come on board through other donors. The BvAT requested the NOAN team to team up with other partner to address the farmers’ challenges with market access and logistics and identify a bulk buyer who can buy off and sell the produce on normal market hours. The farmers’ challenge was the time for selling the produce because they were busy in their farms..