In a bid to support smallholder farmers and improved food security in Nigeria, the Convention on Business Integrity’s for-profit arm, CBi Innovations Limited (CBiIL) has decided to deploy the SAP Rural Sourcing Management solution to support 850 000 small maize producers and integrate them into the agricultural value chains.
The solution will aid the maize farmers to gain access to digital tools to boost productivity and ultimately, make a better profit.
According to Pedro Guerreiro, Managing Director: Central Africa at SAP, the support of smallholder farmers in Nigeria will provide greater food security while also empowering farmers and other players in the agri value chain to unlock greater economic opportunities.
“Smallholder farmers cultivate plots that are on average 2ha in size and earn less than $1,000 a year. We believe that by equipping them with better information and providing access to more suppliers and greater selling opportunities, we can improve smallholder farmers’ productivity and output. This will have the dual benefit of greater food security as well as improved economic opportunities for the farmers, who typically support multiple family members with the money raised from selling their produce,” he said.
The SAP Rural Sourcing Management solution includes a mobile application that enables better tracking and collecting of data related to farms, crops, farmers and produce sales.
The solution launched as a standard solution in 2017, it was piloted in partnership with the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development has been used by governments and large agri producers across Africa to better track and manage crop outputs and give smallholder farmers improved access to information, market data and selling opportunities across the agri value chain.
Commenting on the deployment of the solution, CBiIL CEO Soji Apampa, disclosed that CBiIL is already working with Nestle Nigeria to build an ecosystem of young maize agripreneurs in partnership with AGRA, and this new opportunity will accelerate plans to meet set goals of empowering maize farmers in the region leveraging technology.
He added that CBiIL has also trained hundreds of Community Livelihoods Information Field Entrepreneurs (LIFE) Agents, young unemployed graduates that are recruited from the communities in which they will serve.
“By deploying the Community LIFE Agents kitted out with devices running SAP Rural Sourcing Management, CBiIL will enable effective and efficient aggregation of smallholder producers in ways that support predictability of volumes and quality of production. Data aggregation is a key component of this service and we leverage technology to achieve every milestone along the chain,” he said.