A team of personnel from the Information Marketing and Management Institute visited ARCN on February 8, 2022. During the visit by the team of prospective partners from the Information Marketing and Management Institute led by Dr Ekenechukwu Aloefuna, it was indicated that they are trying to draw an array of strategic partnership with the about 75 National Agricultural Commodity Value Chain Associations that are being coordinated by the Department of Commodity Exports of the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. This, according to him, is aimed at expanding the agricultural commodity value chain. As reported by Kayode I. Aiyedogbon, Head Protocol and Publicity of ARCN, the company’s focus as an organisation, according to Dr Aloefuna, is to expand trade data, trade information and bringing new economic innovation into Nigeria’s preparedness for the African Continental Free Trade area framework. It is a private sector led initiative aimed at ensuring that Nigeria do not only produce, but there must be a record of what is being produced.
In the words of Dr Aloefuna, “we want to put a full restructured mechanism into the system through the Agricultural Commodity Value Chain Enhancement Project (ACVEP). This is aimed at farm mapping, financing, farmers’ record management system and ensuring that value chain expansion is driven by processing, products tracking, trade platform that will be e-commerce driven and product forecasting driven as well as logistics tracking driven with full data management. This will give rise to new extension workers to be given opportunities other than farming, but will be doing other things around the ecosystem all aimed at creating over two million jobs, with the creation of agricultural commodity aggregation centres in all the States.”
Furthermore, Dr Aloefuna stated that in seeking partnership with the ARCN, this will require bringing the 32 NARIs and FCAs on board so that whatever they each produce will be commercialized through this project. He further opined that his company have signed partnership with the Federal Ministry of Trade and in the process realized the need for a core agricultural research and value chain mirroring organization like ARCN in order to become a major driver of the ACVEP project whereby they will coordinate the marketing from the private sector, while the ARCN takes care of the government sector.
On his part, the Executive Secretary of ARCN, Prof. Garba Hamidu Sharubutu mni welcomed the delegation very sincerely and quickly opined that partnering with organizations like this gives him joy because government activities must be private sector driven, which according to him, is the target of the Honourable Minister. The meeting was attended by the Director Extension services, Prof. Bello Zaki Abubakar, Dr Rufina Chukwumalume and Mr Ubi Ikpi.
