…VCDP remains cardinal in food production – PCU

…we’re ready for assessment, improvement – NPC

By Gabriel Ewepu, Abuja

WITH resolve to develop value chains in the agricultural sector to achieve food and nutrition security, and also reduce the annual food import bill in line with the country’s national policy, the Country Director, International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, Nigeria, Dede Ekoue, Tuesday, explained the importance and critical role of the Mid- Term Review, MTR, mission of the Value Chain Development Programme, VCDP, in Nigeria.

Ekoue described the VCDP as of the major agricultural programmes in Nigeria that focuses on enhancing the incomes and food one security of poor rural households engaged in the production, processing and marketing of rice and cassava in targeted states on a sustainable basis.

According to her, the objective falls under IFAD’s strategic objectives to increase the productive capacities of poor rural people in a sustainable and resilient manner; increasing and improving their engagement in markets, while enabling them to better manage related risks; and strengthening the environmental sustainability and climate resilience of their economic activities.

She said: “The Mid-Term Review of the Value Chain Development Programme is a very important Mission that is going to assess the progress made by the Value Chain Development Programme up till now and identify the challenges they face, and also what are the opportunities? The goal is to trace a trajectory for the second half of the project.

“This project is important and aims to reach 135, 000 smallholder farmers in the middle belt which we are discussing, for example, whether the programme needs to be readjusted to take into account the impact of external events such as the Russia-Ukraine War, Climate Change effects such as the floods, and also take into account inflation on the project.

“These three elements are affecting our beneficiaries, therefore we want to make the project more relevant to the smallholder farmers in Nigeria so that the impact of the project will be scaled. So these are the strategic thrust of this Mid- Term Review, MTR, mission.

“Focusing on rice and cassava, the program aims to promote and improve livelihood outcomes of 135,000 smallholder farmers along the value chains in the nine states, Anambra, Benue, Ebonyi, Niger, Ogun and Taraba. Expanded in 2018 to Enugu, Kogi and Nasarawa.

“The MTR will be an opportunity to fundamentally revisit design features to: validate the continued relevance of the programme and/or its component parts by identifying what is working and what is not working and reasons for the scenarios; review implementation performance comprising quality of project management, M&E, performance of key partners, gender and poverty focus, effectiveness of targeting, innovation and learning, and climate/environment focus; assess the effectiveness of implementation with respect to the outputs, outcomes and impact arising from the two technical component – market development and production/productivity enhancement among others.

“The main objective of the MTR is to provide FGN, IFAD, and the participating States and Local Governments with: a detailed assessment on the level of achievements of VCDP; continued relevance of the market-led, demand-driven approach and the assumptions made during programme design; identified implementation constraints; as well as recommendations and suggestions on any re-structuring, re-design and amendments that might be desired and necessary to improve programme effectiveness.

“With these important goals in sight, this Mid-Term Review, MTR, mission is of significant importance in this current context marked by several challenges. The Russia – Ukraine war and its impacts on food and agricultural input, the challenges linked to currency exchange rate, the general hike in price, the insecurity in some rural areas and the climate related disasters such as the flood. The recent floods have washed away many of the progress made by the project and smallholder farmers, making it more difficult for the project to reach its target results.

“Against this difficult backdrop, the international high level supervision mission team coordinated by IFAD’s Country Director with the technical advisory of IFAD’s Project Team Lead Jonathan Agwe. The technical leadership is done by an experienced consultant Dr. Samuel Eremie. This mission will consult all key stakeholders (beneficiaries; agrobusiness coaches and incubators; state and local authorities national and international development partners financial institutions) to assess innovative and efficient ways to sustainably address the challenges faced the project, to harness existing opportunities in order to safeguard and scale up the progress made by VCDP.

She added, “At this juncture, I would like to call on all actors involved to fully invest themselves in this MTR mission to help maximize the benefits of the innovative VCDP programme for rural smallholder farmers and for the rural development of the Middle-Belt region of the country.”

Meanwhile, she also pointed at the impact and success made by VCDP, “Through the 4P model, VCDP supported more than 35,000 farmers for be the CAF members. After working successfully with 4P model since 2016 in the IFAD-supported VCDP project, Olam has increased its milling capacity by 10 times.

“Further, it now has a highly reliable supply of rice brought to the mill regularly, and much higher quality rice than can be found on the market. This is a major success for VCDP’s smallholder farmers as well as the private sector.”

The Acting Director, Projects Coordination Unit, PCU, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Dr Peter Kush, in a remark, said, “We are aware of some of the challenges which some are internal while some are external. I want to believe the internal challenges we will be able to overcome them.

“We are in the Medium Term with you for VCDP. The essence of the Medium Term is not time to write off VCDP, the essence is to look at it critically; see those areas that are making headway and if we need to improve then we improve on that and areas VCDP is not making headway then look at it critically and come up with possible solutions, and how they can be reviewed and make better achievement.

“I want to believe that VCDP is making a headway based on positive impact on the economy despite the Russia-Ukraine War, inflation and other issues.”

However, Kuch added that there is achievement under VCDP, and should be improved upon.

The National Programme Coordinator, NPC, VCDP, Dr Fatima Aliyu, said, “It is very important in a life of a project because we have experts coming from all over the world. When I look at our project to see what we have done right and how we can improve it and what we are not getting so that they will tell us we are not doing this right and this is the way to go to get it right, and if there are things we are not doing maybe new thing that have come up because every day new things are coming; innovations that would benefit our beneficiaries, the smallholder farmers this team are going to let us know and put us at the right path in order to adopt those things and make it well.”

Aliyu also added that the VCDP team is energized and looking forward to their counterparts, because their coming is to also help them, and expressed readiness of the team to work with them as they would add value to better the project they have on ground.