The National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) at the weekend trained and adopted 75 smart farmers into the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA).
The training was held at the University of Ibadan following the successful implementation of NAVSA for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) and its prospect to attract the youths to embrace agriculture, leveraging digital technologies.
Speaking during a brief ceremony to present digital tools and seed funding to the beneficiaries, the Director General of NITDA, Kashifu Inuwa, who was represented by the team lead and Assistant Director, of the Digital Economy Development Department, Dr. Ayodele Bakare, reiterated that the programme is designed to help the farmers raise their efficiency, effectiveness, and profitability of their farm businesses through the adoption of digital technologies.
He disclosed that the programme was designed in two folds; to build the digital skill and literacy skills of the beneficiaries and to practically demonstrate to them how feasible it is to run a smart farm.
“This programme was initiated by NITDA to demonstrate that IT is an enabler of all other sectors of the economy, and if properly deployed and adopted by farmers, it would aid food production and security in the country, adding that the essence of the training is for the beneficiaries to be able to manage their smart farms and become self-reliance and self-employed,” he said.
While advising the beneficiaries to practice what they have learned throughout the period of the training and build on it, he assured them that NITDA would continue to provide the necessary support should the need arises.
The essence of the NAVSA programme is to build a sustainable digital platform that provides varieties of information for more than half of agriculture ecosystem players in Nigeria in order to enable a highly-productive agribusiness economy.
Since its inception, the programme has adopted almost 992 smart farmers and created thousands of direct and indirect jobs for Nigerians.