Nigeria, Germany Partner to Boost Food Security, Gender Equality

Oluchi Chibuzor

Nigeria and Germany have entered a new partnership aimed at boosting food security and achieving gender equality before 2030, two cardinal objectives that form the World Bank Group’s Programme on Gender in Agriculture.

Under the partnership, Nigeria through the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research (NIOMR) has trained over 153 women in aquaculture production with the support of the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

This was revealed at the weekend at the completion of a two-week capacity-building programme the production of catfish held at the Women Development Centre, Agege.

The programme, which involved Lagos State Ministry of Women Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, organised for 306 women from the state in two batches as part of NIOMR’s effort at meeting the ‘gender equity in agriculture’ goal of the World Bank Group. 

Through the support of GIZ, each participant received 200 catfish juveniles, seven bags of fish feed, two plastic tanks, two plastic baskets, PH meters, weighing scale, scoop net and log book.

 Under the partnership with the GIZ, both NIOMR and WAPA are mandated to monitor the project till February 2023 to ensure women grow the fish to table size and ensure sustainability.

Commenting on the programme, the Director General of NIOMR, Prof. Sule Abiodun noted that  the institute as a World bank training centre would continue to advocate for gender mainstreaming across the agriculture value chain.

Sule, represented by NIOMR’s Director of Research, Dr. Patricia Anyanwu, explained that achieving sustainable development goals like gender equality, zero hunger could be achieved through empowering women.

The director-general said: “This is because in Nigeria, we are already campaigning for mainstreaming women into agricultural production. Many of them are processors, so if the fish are not there they will not earn a livelihood.”

“When they go into production and then when they finish production they process, that will increase their revenue generation bases; alleviate their poverty; create employment for them and then improve family nutrition,” Sule observed.

The director-general explained that the programme “is going to train a total of 300 women. It is assumed that when they get established, they will have one or two people they will employ. That, as a result, will increase the country’s employment rate.

“From these 300 more women will be stimulated to go into catfish production. This, equally, is a way of increasing catfish production in Nigeria and Africa. In Africa, Nigeria is the second largest producer of aquaculture fish.

“But we have not hit the potential. We are supposed to generate up to over two million tons of aquaculture production. But we are just hovering around just 400,000 metric tons. This one is just a way to pivot the increase in domestic production of fish in the country.”

Meanwhile, according to the World Bank, when women are linked to agricultural value chains from production all the way to processing and marketing, they help make traditional farming more productive and commercially viable.

Following the above, each participant was trained on catfish production, and are expected to progress into various value chains in the aquaculture sector.

Also at the programme, Director, Poverty Alleviation, Ministry of Women Affair and Poverty Alleviation, Mrs. Salami Oluwatoyin-Fatimoh, observed that empowering women in the aquaculture value chain “is critical in the agenda of the Babajide Sanwo-Oluwu as an aquatic state.”

Oluwatoyin-Fatimoh said the nomination of participants was based on a thoughtful gender analysis by WAPA aimed at resulting in positive gender outcomes for the selected women.

She said: “Women are marginalised in several ways, because most of the developmental projects do not look into how to help women. But because women’s role in the family is critical that is why this project is