By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA – IN a bid to safeguard against postharvest losses and upscale farmers’ productivity and profitability, the Bank of Agriculture, BoA, and Dalahill Law Practice, Thursday, synergized on an initiative to drive climate financing in the agricultural sector.

 Speaking on the sidelines of the Clean Energy Financing Capacity Building Workshop in Abuja, the Executive Director, Operations, BoA, Mr Tosin Salami, explained that the BoA focuses on operationalising its Clean Energy Development and Innovation Unit, CEDIU, with the aim of expanding climate-smart energy solutions basically to tackle post-harvest losses and boost farmer’s productivity.

According to Salami, the bank is working assiduously to ensure attention is given to bankable project concepts with the aim of attracting multilateral institutions and private climate funds to address key issues affecting farmers.

The initiative is designed to integrate clean energy solutions into agricultural value chains by strengthening institutional capacity, unlocking climate finance, and developing scalable, investment-ready projects across the sector.  

Consequently, the project is structured around three core components: Establishment of a Clean Energy Delivery and Innovation Unit (CEDIU) within the Bank of Agriculture to serve as a central platform for coordination and implementation ; Development of Clean Energy Access and Climate Finance Frameworks to enable the Bank to mobilize and deploy green financing effectively; and origination of a pipeline of clean energy–enabled agricultural projects, including solutions such as solar-powered irrigation, cold storage, and energy-efficient agro-processing systems.

He said: “Within the Bank of Agriculture, with regard to climate finance, we are really focused on operationalizing the Clean Energy Development and Innovation Unit, and this is a bold and strategic initiative that our Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Bank of Agriculture, BoA, Ayodeji Sotinrin, has brought up, and we are all working together. 

“Today marks the operationalization of that initiative with the training and the workshop and capacity building for all of our staff. We have a big group, and then we’ll continue to roll that out across the organization. So with this initiative, we have the strategy, we have the framework, and we’re also developing very good concept moves around bankable projects that will enable us to play out energy poverty, post-harvest losses, and resolve some of the problems within the agricultural sector.

“So when we develop these concept moves for some of these initiatives or bankable projects, we expect financing from multilateral organizations, from private climate funds, and when we receive those, it helps us develop last-mile initiatives on infrastructure. So think about cold chain. So think about irrigation as well.”

He also explained that bank will use other reliable channels to ensure the real farmers benefit from the initiative when it is implemented by using credible private sector organizations including cooperatives, saying, “Not necessarily it is done by the state or by the local government but also private partners, development finance organizations as well, like Gates Foundation and all of these other international organizations who help support the channels for bringing out these products.”

Also speaking on the sidelines, the Head, Clean Energy Delivery and Implementation Unit, BoA, and Project Lead for the Clean Energy Implementation Programme, Dr. Adnan Aminu, explained that the Unit was being funded through a grant from the Africa Climate Foundation, ACF, to Dalahill LP which is implementing the project within the bank.

According to Aminu, the programme is in its fifth month, basically it to strengthen BoA’s capacity to finance clean energy projects and improve farmers’ access to electricity and climate-smart technologies.

“The objective is to set up a Clean Energy Delivery and Implementation Unit within the bank that would help the bank to finance clean energy programs so that more farmers get access to power, access to energy, and access to climate-smart and energy-smart technologies.

“The objective is that we want to be able to see more smallholder farmers are getting energy access, energy for irrigation, energy for processing, energy even to power their homes. And we do this in a climate-smart and climate-friendly way”, he added.

Meanwhile, he made it known that the project would produce a Clean Energy Accessibility Framework to guide BOA’s financing priorities, risk assessment toolkits for evaluating clean energy investments and lending models that encourage financing for farmer clusters and cooperatives.