Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) disclosed that it has facilitated funding of about $375 million from commercial banks for agribusinesses from 2017 till date. Over 700,000 farmers have been trained on good agronomic practices and financial education, and provided with high quality agricultural inputs.
The Managing Director of NIRSAL, Aliyu Abdulhammed, revealed this in Abuja, while signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between NIRSAL and the International Centre for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) towards the delivery of a Climate Risk Profiling Project in Nigeria.
The project, he noted, was aimed at providing an overview of climate risk issues and vulnerabilities across agro-ecological zones in the country as well as indications of how climate change will potentially impact, agricultural production, energy, water resources and human health.
According the NIRSAL boss, the organisation recognises the importance of strategic partnerships as critical success factors for the delivery of agriculture and agribusiness value chain financing and risk management operations.
“We have built capabilities and expertise for effectively leveraging, managing and maximising strategic partnerships for mutual benefits and achievement of objectives and are convinced that this partnership with CIAT is one that would yield positive results that would be celebrated by Nigeria and Nigerians,” he explained.
“We are convinced that the partnership will birth even more invaluable projects and programmes that will deliver immense benefits to the sector and economy at large. NIRSAL is not only conscious of climate change, we understand the effects that climate risk issues have on the current and and could have on the future productivity of agricultural value chains and the sustainable development of the sector as a whole.
“To demonstrate our climate-smartness as an organisation, NIRSAL has a Climate-Smart Agriculture and Renewable Energy Business Unit that is saddled with the responsibility of aligning our operations and interventions with Nigeria’s NDC targets and pursuing climate-compatible approaches to agriculture in Nigeria,” he added.
