ABUJA/KADUNA (ILO News) - The International Labour Organization is supporting rural entrepreneurship and livelihood opportunities in Kaduna State through the implementation of the Food for Africa Project. The project objectives are to promote replicable and integrated solutions to agro-food value chain development, food security and nutrition, youth employment and poverty alleviation therefore allowing farmers and youths in Jere community of Kaduna to improve their livelihoods through access to new market value chains. The ILO is delivering the business development activities for the project using the ILO Start and Improve Your Business (SIYB) tool. The programme kicked off with a 10 day SIYB Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop in Kaduna, running from 15th- 25th October 2018.

As a precursor to the the ToT, the ILO conducted a SIYB Training Needs Analysis (TNA) to identify potential community facilitators for the program from the pool of project beneficiaries in Jere, Kaduna State, and selected 15 participants to take part in the SIYB training of trainers program. The main objective of this intervention is to provide the trainers with the capacity in using the standardized entrepreneurship curriculum that will enable them transfer skills to farmers entrepreneurs so that they can engage in viable farming as a business hence promoting food security.

During the first day of the workshop, the ILO Country Office Director, ILO- Mr Dennis Zulu , in a speech read on his behalf by the Senior Program Officer Ms Emeka-Anuna explained the importance of the ToT workshop for the project. He stated that the program would serve to improve Agri-business of the Jere farmers and provide additional skills to the ToT workshop participants to enable them expand their livelihood opportunities.

Following the ToT workshop, the 15 trainers will undergo the certification process by training 100-150 Jere community members and project beneficiaries in the coming months.

Food Africa Project:
The Food Africa Project is an innovative public-private partnership between the SDG Fund, UN Agencies, private sector and Nigerian government to improve food security and nutrition, and alleviate poverty by strengthening of local value chains for farmers. The pilot project in Kaduna provides a backward and forward integration approach for food supply chain management and introduces more sustainable practices to reduce crop waste, and improve smallholder farmers’ profitability. Recognizing the link between the gaps in skills and structural unemployment in the region, the project promotes income generating opportunities and offer technical support to promote trade of local goods and services.

The Project is being implemented as a collaboration between several specialized UN Agencies, providing expertise on labour and employment (ILO), food production (FAO), and international trade (ITC); private sector- Sahara Group, the Roca Brothers; the United Nations’ SDG Fund, and the Kaduna State Government.