The Agribooster initiative is reaching a new milestone with a new partnership signed between OCP Africa Fertilizer Nigeria, the Nigerian Agricultural Bank and Novus Agro Nigeria. This new partnership is expected to help the Agribooster initiative expand in the south-west of the country.

OCP Africa Fertilizer Nigeria has partnered with the Nigerian Agricultural Bank and Novus Agro Nigeria in order to strengthen smallholder access to both funds and agricultural inputs. The pilot program will be launched at Iseyin in Oyo State with 1,000 farmers that will benefit from farm input credit.

The programme is strictly of benefit to farmers who have one hectare of farmland and above, especially farmers groups. The OCP Africa Country Manager, Mr Caleb Usoh, said that the signing was a step further to strengthen its Agribooster Initiative in the South-Western part of the country.

Usoh said that though, the Agribooster initiative had been ongoing in Kaduna, Kebbi and Niger states, the need to expand and impact smallholder farmers in the South-West became imperative.

« We have a lot of farmers doing wonderful things but the major thing they need is support from organisations structured to bring the desired support and that is what brought about the Agribooster project. The Agribooster piloting was in Kaduna three years ago with the maize value chain for 5,000 farmers and since then we have also expanded to other states and partnering with different organisations » said Usoh.

The recent restructuring of the Nigerian Agricultural Bank also supported the efforts of OCP AFRICA Fertilizer Nigeria, repositioning the bank as a key partner to achieve the mission of reaching more smallholder farmers across Nigeria. A repositioning that fits fully into the South-South collaboration that exists between the Nigerian federal government and Morocco. 

Mr Olabode Abiloye, BoA’s Executive Director, Wholesale Banking South, said « BoA is a development finance institution that provides financial access, primarily, to smallholder farmers and the rural economy as well as medium to large scale farmers. In doing this, we identify with what the requirements of what our target market is ». « Our relationship with OCP, as much as we recognise the autonomy of OCP as a body corporate on its own, is also part of the larger relationship of the Federal Government with the government of the kingdom of Morocco » he added.