The five days intensive training by the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) has been concluded.
The initiative is an adoption of another 75 smart farmers into the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) platform at the University of Ibadan, the Oyo State capital.
According to organisers, the programme aims at building a sustainable digital platform that provides varieties of information for more than half of the agriculture ecosystem players in Nigeria to enable a highly-productive agribusiness economy, Nigerian Tribune reports.
Interestingly, it has since adopted almost 992 smart farmers and created thousands of direct and indirect jobs to Nigerians.
During a brief closing ceremony and presentation of digital tools and seed funding to the beneficiaries the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, who was represented by the team lead and Assistant Director, Digital Economy Development Department, Dr. Ayodele Bakare, restated that the programme is designed to help the farmers raise their efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability of their farm businesses through the adoption of digital technologies.
Inuwa, while giving an overview of the programmes, disclosed that the initiative was designed in two folds; to build the beneficiaries’ digital skill and literacy skills and to practically demonstrate to them how feasible it is to run a smart farm.
He said that the programme was initiated by NITDA to demonstrate that IT is an enabler of all other sectors of the economy, and if properly deployed and adopted by farmers, it would aid food production and security in the country, adding that the essence of the training is for the beneficiaries to be able to manage their smart farms and become self-reliance and self-employed.
