Promoting efficiency and growth
Providing communication links beyond rural villages could be a key to agricultural efficiency and growth in Nigeria. And the project will reduce corruption.How is it to be done? Once again, government steps on to the stage and gets involved.
This article is from Daily Trust in Kaduna.
60bn for 10 million phones story not true -- Agric minister
Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Akinwumi Adesina, has described the story making the rounds that his ministry intends to spend 60 billion naira on ten million cell phones for farmers as a misrepresentation.
He said the project will be financed… "through a tax, [which] will support this initiative, in partnership with Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development. We intend to work with existing mobile operators in Nigeria through a public-private partnership.”
Akinwumi Adesina
He said the distribution of phones to farmers is in line with the ministry’s agricultural modernization drive aimed at connecting farmers to information, loans, market and make them adapt to climate change…
In today's supply chains, the flow of information from buyers to farmers must be instant, to meet rapidly changing demands. Unless farmers have information at their finger tips, they will lose out on market opportunities.
“Our goal is to empower every farmer. No farmer will be left behind…
The minister added that the cell phones distribution also aims to bridge the huge gap in access to telephone between the farmers who are 70 percent of the country’s population and the non-farmers.
He said, “First, the mobile phones will be used to scale up the access of farmers to improved seeds and fertilizers to millions of farmers, directly. The federal government succeeded in 2012 in getting seeds and fertilizers to farmers, via the Growth Enhancement Support (GES), which used mobile phones to reach farmers with subsidized inputs.
The system ended 40 years of corruption on fertilizers and cut off rent seekers and middlemen who - for decades - have entrenched massive corruption of the fertilizer sector…
The GES system reached over 1.2 million farmers in 120 days in 2012.
“We succeeded because we used mobile phones to reach farmers directly and cut off the middle men and those who have cheated farmers for decades. We empowered the poor farmers, with many getting subsidized seeds and fertilizers from government for the first time ever. We brought transparency into what was perhaps the most corrupt system in Nigeria. We ended fertilizer corruption of four decades, in 90 days, because of mobile phone tools we deployed..."
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Labels: corruption, economy, Nigeria
posted by Ken Wedding @ 5:30 AM
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Nigeria: ANPP anger over free phone plan for farmersA Nigerian opposition party has condemned a government scheme to give 10 million mobile phones for free to farmers.
All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) General Secretary Tijani Tumsa said the plan was a "mischievous vote-catching exercise" for the 2015 elections.
Last week, the agriculture minister said the phones would help farmers "drive an agriculture revolution"…
Mr Tumsa told the BBC's Focus on Africa programme the scheme was a ploy by the ruling People's Democratic Party (PDP) to "connect" with voters in rural areas in the build-up to elections…
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