The overall goal of the North East Youth Agripreneurship (NEYA) Initiative is to harness the energy and skills of Youths of the NorthEast region of Nigeria into rewarding participation in agribusiness thereby contributing significantly to increased agricultural production, employment generation, and wealth creation in the region. The initiative is centered on facilitating the involvement of educated youths (with a minimum of secondary education) in agribusiness activities (primary production, service provision, value addition and commercialization) along rice, maize, cowpea and groundnut value chains.

The activities of these youths will in-turn create market opportunities for agricultural inputs (including fertilizers and improved seeds), farm services (including mechanization services for land preparation, planting, crop protection and harvesting), farm outputs (including aggregation and sale of grains) and value addition activities (particularly processing of grains into food products).

All these market opportunities are fully aligned with ISL’s primary business of end-to-end development of agricultural value chains to enable effective and profitable participation of smallholders. Specifically, as it will translate to

• Significant growth in demand for ISL’s supply of improved farm inputs and extension services,
• Expansion of ISL’s produce aggregation business through ready access to grains produced by the youths, and
• Expansion of ISL’s value addition activities into the region through partnership with NEYA associates.

Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.

― Malcolm X

The activities covered by ISL as it pertains to this subward was centered on the facilitation of the newly formed NEYA groups to select leaders within them as an entity that will spearhead and formalize their registration as registered cooperatives. This is one of the core requirements that will necessitate their recognition as a cooperative society according to stipulated laws guiding the formation and establishment of cooperative societies. The activities under this period also spiraled along the lines of collection of guarantor’s forms from all the locations. So far, 4764 guarantor’s forms have been collected from the participants. All of these activities are geared generally towards the facilitation of inputs.

ACTIVITY 1: Facilitation of newly formed NEYA groups to select their leaders and formalize their registration as cooperatives

ISL Field Officers from various locations of implementation carefully facilitate the formation of the NEYA members into groups and the selection of their leaders. This formation and selection is based on criterias of commitment of NEYA members, proximity of members and their willingness to participate in the program. This is to enhance the speedy processing of their registration into cooperatives. They were trained on the benefits of cooperatives which includes

• Fostering unity and coexistence amongst members of the community
• Enhancing access to credit facility
• Cross guarantor
• Input financing amongst many other things.

The following locations all have groups formations across board

• Gombi and Hong LGAs
• Mubi (North and South)
• Yola (North and South)
• Kwaya-Kusar LGA
• Gombe and Billiri LGAs
• Potiskum and Damatur

The breakdown is attached at the annex of this document.

ACTIVITY 2: Collection of Guarantor’s Data Forms

In the Month under review, guarantor’s forms were collected by the Field officers of ISL in their various locations of the activity implementation. This is to fulfill all requirements needed for the  facilitation of inputs as required by partners. A total of 4764 Guarantor’s forms were collected by the field officers of ISL from the various locations of implementation.

The key lesson for the month under consideration is that two activities can be predetermined at the same time that could be channeled towards achieving distinct results. For instance, mapping can be done concurrently with the guarantor’s form collection since meeting some of the NEYA members can become busy because of the rainy season.

The next milestone that will define the achievements throughout next month September will be

1. Commencement of selection of members for Service Provision Groups
2. Registration of NEYA groups into corporatives.
3. Facilitation of input delivery by our input partners

ANNEX 1

NEYA GROUPS FORMED FOR REGISTRATION ACCORDING TO LOCATIONS

TOTAL OF GUARANTORS FORMS COLLECTED ACCORDING TO LOCATIONS

A chart showing the distribution of guarantor’s form collected from various locations according to the gender of participants.