Feed Nigeria Summit to Repair Severed Food System

By Omolabake Fasogbon

Nigeria’s foremost agricultural convocation, the Feed Nigeria Summit (FNS), this year, will focus on revamping the country’s food system architecture and address concerns surrounding critical value chain activities in the agriculture sector.

The Summit themed; POST-COVID19: A Repaired Food System, Pathway to a Revived Economy seeks to capitalise on the positive energy of the Nigerian agriculture sector to strengthen the nation’s overall economy, post-pandemic. It aims to contribute significantly to the actualization of an inclusive, efficient and competitive food system for Nigeria.

The Technical Adviser to the Minister of Agriculture, on Knowledge Management and Communication, Barr. Richard-Mark Mbaram, who is also a member of the event’s organising committee, made this disclosure during a virtual media briefing held recently.

According to Mbaram, the Summit targets the resuscitation of Nigeria’s food system which was severely disrupted by the global COVID-19 pandemic. He harped on the need for an objective auditing of the entire agricultural ecosystem to ascertain areas of strength and weaknesses; hence the Summit’s theme.

“The theme of this year’s Feed Nigeria Summit resonates with current realities we face globally from the prism of the food system, heavily occasioned by the COVID-19 pandemic. From Nigeria’s perspective, there is so much at stake. With this Summit, we are looking to x-ray these realities,” Mbaram said.

Though laudable, efforts and measures made by the government to improve the food system following the COVID-19 pandemic are still curtailed by challenges which continuously result in low productivity, price variations and unfavourable trade realities, post-harvest loss, malnutrition and unemployment.

Mbaram further stated that addressing these concerns will inevitably strengthen the overall economic recovery efforts of the government at all levels.

He said, “For us, if we can repair the country’s food system, then certainly our economic-revamp efforts will be on the right track. The Summit will achieve this critical objective with the support of the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), also keen on advancing the course of its agricultural policy – NATIP.”

With strong support from the African Development Bank Group (AfDB), Mbaram stated that the AfDB-funded Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Project is central to the objective of the Summit.

Emphasis, he said, will be placed on tracking the implementation status of the Project and the Green Imperative Programme of the government. These programmes, he noted, will address the existing concerns around critical infrastructural provision, technological innovation, mechanization and extension, as core components of the FMARD’s policy thrust.