Aminat Isah, Abuja
The Minister of Communication and Digital Economy, Dr. Isa Pantami and the Director General of the National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA) Mr Kashifu Inuwa Abdullah have launched NITDA Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) project to marks the beginning of a transformation in the agriculture.
The innovation which is a product of research paper “Towards Diversification of Nigeria Economy through Smart Agriculture” published by the Hon. Minister in June 2017 in International Journal of Computer Science and Information Technology Research, while he was serving as NITDA’s DG would enable the sector to contribute effectively to the digital economy of Nigeria and create jobs for six million teeming youths in the spate of five to ten years.
Speaking at the Launch which took place during NITDA’s e-Nigeria Award Night in Abuja, Lukman Lamid, the desk officer in charge of the NAVSA project said what the agency did was to rethink agriculture differently, by creating a digital platform that will connect the Agric ecosystem and enable the possibility of new business models by the private sector which will, in turn, generate new products and services and create value across the Agric value chain.
This he say is to support the Honourable Minister’s digital economy focus especially in a critical sector of the economy as Agriculture in order to bring into reality the economic diversification of the Mr. President and ensure attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 which is to end hunger and achieve food security by 2030.
The idea is also to support 25 graduates in each of the 774 LGAs on modern Agric methods, give them the resources and the right technology to enable them to manage their farms from planting to harvesting and marketing.
“This pilot phase is a proof of concept which had witnessed selection, training and support of 15 graduates in Gombe State on modern farming methods in collaboration with National Agriculture Extension and Research Liaison Services (NAERLS).
“Ability to get information to monitor farms in real-time and connect with resources to manage farm effectively will improve crop yield, quality of farm produce per block of land and profit for these farmers.
“In the future, we would deploy and integrate smart technologies such as IoT on the platform to improve the accuracy and the processes of getting information in real-time, integrate with GIS technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Big data analytics among other emerging technologies to add more value to the platform,” said Lamid
The Platform will serve NITDA supported farmers, any other farmers and all the ecosystem members when it is fully ready.
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