ILO and NIRSAL Sign MOU for Capacity Building of its officials

ABUJA (ILO News): The International Labour Organization (ILO) and Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) have signed a Memorandum Of Understanding (MOU) for building the capacities of the officials of NIRSAL on Agricultural Value Chain Development in Nigeria. The signing ceremony took place at the end of a three-day workshop on Capacity Building on Agricultural Value Chain Development held at NIRSAL Headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday 9th May 2018. The workshop which was conducted by the International Training Centre (ITC) Turin of the ILO was attended by the management and technical staff of Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and NIRSAL.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, the Director of the ILO Country Office for Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia and Sierra Leone and Liaison Office for ECOWAS, Dennis Zulu, welcomed the collaboration between the ILO/ITC and NIRSAL on Value Chain Development as key to the realization of the numerous job opportunities for youths in Nigeria. Whilst bemoaning the growing unemployment challenge facing Nigeria, the Director emphasized that with Value Chain Development in agriculture, more decent jobs would be created and unemployment reduced.

The ILO Director also highlighted the opportunities that Value Chain Development offered in increasing Government revenue through tax collection, modernization of the agricultural sector and attraction of more buyers within and outside Nigeria due to innovations in processing of agricultural produce and packaging. While urging Nigerians to patronize agricultural produce processed in Nigeria, the Director pledged the ILO’s continued collaboration with NIRSAL and Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to enable NIRSAL realize its objectives.

In his address, the Managing Director of NIRSAL, Mr. Aliyu Abdulhameed commended the collaboration between the ILO and NIRSAL. He stated that NIRSAL, though a young institution, was out to establish world-class partnerships with Organizations such as the ILO with the aim of enhancing the capacity of the institution as a leading organization that can compete with similar institutions anywhere in the world and solve the universal Agricultural financing problems in Nigeria.

According to the NIRSAL MD, the core responsibility of NIRSAL was to de-risk agriculture so that banks, financiers and other investors could lend to the sector with confidence. He said “We must de-risk the Nigerian agricultural value chain and provide technical assistance” that would help the bank and other investors to lend for sustainable agriculture. He stated that de-risking would enable the producers and other value chain actors to borrow, attract investment and use those finances more effectively to increase outputs of better quality agricultural products that would be more competitive both at the domestic and international markets.

The NIRSAL Managing Director stated that it was imperative that participants, as the catalysts, and other stakeholders and financiers understood that sustainable development of agricultural value chain could only be achieved when all the stakeholders work in collaboration with one another.

He explained that the collaboration with the ITC/ILO was meant to equip the participants with the necessary knowledge and skills that would help them support the stakeholders to contribute to the achievement of the Economic Recovery and Growth Plan (ERGP) of the Federal Government. The partnership with the ILO was just one of the partnerships already entered into with other UN agencies like the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). While thanking the ILO for the collaboration, he called for the sustenance of the partnership for the benefit of Nigeria.