The Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Dr Isa Pantami on Tuesday officially flagged off the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture (NAVSA) Programme, the North East edition which is holding in Gombe, Gombe State; building on the fact that Nigeria has a potential critical mass of ‘digital natives’ that can transform the country into a regional and global digital powerhouse in various sectors of the economy.
The NAVSA program is in line with the blueprint of the National Digital Economy Policy and Strategy for a Digital Nigeria developed by the rebirth Federal Ministry of Communications and Digital Economy under the visionary leadership of Dr Pantami, in line with demands of the digital age where Agriculture is being practiced as a business driven by digital technologies and innovation.
The NAVSA is built as a digital platform to connect the agriculture ecosystem to deliver services to farmers more productively and efficiently, in the interest of Nigeria’s nurturing digital economy for a digital Nigeria.
In his remark, Dr Pantami stated that a digitalized agricultural sector in Nigeria holds a great potential for wealth generation, job creation, and attracting foreign exchange into the country.
The Minister cited an example with the Netherlands with a population of just about 17 million people and an area of 42,000 square kilometers which happens to be the second-largest exporter of Agric products in the world.
“Netherlands agricultural approach is smart and makes significant use of digital technologies,” Pantami said.
Adding that “we want to do this in Nigeria and the National Adopted Village for Smart Agriculture is an important step in this process.”
Participants of smart agriculture programme were empowered with Smart Devices, Seed fund, Know your Farmer, KYF- Farmers’ Identification, Digital Skills, Internet Connectivity, Digital Business Ideas, and Continuous reinvestment model.
NAVSA is a digital platform designed to practically enable and accelerate the achievement of Government (Federal, State and local) policy drives in agriculture.
Its objectives include: Improve production and productivity of every NITDA adopted farmer on NAVSA platform by 35%; increase the income of every NITDA adopted farmer on NAVSA platform by 30% at every harvest; improve production and productivity of any other farmer on NAVSA platform by 20% and increase the income of any other farmer on NAVSA platform by 15% at every harvest.
Its vision is to make NAVSA the hub and number one ecosystem and data driven agriculture platform in Nigeria.