The overall goal of the North East Youth Agripreneurship (NEYA) Initiative is to harness the energy and skills of Youths of the North East 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 within the month under review are the Training of Trainers (TOT) on Farming as a Business (FAB) using the Nigerian Agricultural Enterprise Curriculum (NAEC) and the planning towards the dry season farming.

ACTIVITY 5.1: Preparations towards dry season farming

In view of the coming plans for the dry season farming which aligns with the activities of the NEYA initiative, Field officers from various location of the project implementation have identified various areas suitable for the dry season farming. This activity was made possible through consultation and showing of preparedness by the registered groups in these locations to participate in the dry season farming. As it pertains to this sub award, ISL is supporting all ready registered groups to ensure the dry farming is achieved and increased yield is recorded. ISL will assist in some areas such as provision of irrigation pumps, access to financing and farm inputs. As such, the following preconditions were laid for groups that needed to access irrigation pumps, these includes;

1. Individual cannot access irrigation pump.
2. For group to qualify, it MUST be active and registered as cooperatives under NEYA, with evidence of at least 2 minute of meetings to show, and copy of group registration certificate.
3. Group must have a farmland (rented by the group) and suitable for dry season farming, which would be validated and mapped by ISL FO.
4.  Minimum number of members a group MUST have to apply for the irrigation pump is 15. Interested group should indicated interest through a written application.
5. Group should be able to purchase inputs and manage the farm and labour cost, independent of itself, peradventure there was delay of inputs and tools from ISL partners.

In the following locations, groups were recognised and ready for the dry season farming

• Hawul
• Kwaya
• Gombi

ACTIVITY 6.1: NEYA Farming as Business Training Step down training

In Nigeria, farmers often lack basic planning skills, evaluation and analysis tools to support the growth of their farms, which has resulted in lack of solid decision making concerning economic and agronomic aspects needed to maximize their land productivity, farming income and profits. Other agriculture actors such as input suppliers and traders also lack business skills and value chain connections that are necessary for an efficient and competitive business environment. To adequately address these gaps, the curriculum that adequately addressed these gaps through it various modules was used as the document for the training of trainers that will subsequently train registered groups in the NEYA Initiative.

Farming is one of the oldest activities that most smallholder farmer and rural dwellers engage in by choice or by inheritance. But farming as business is a concept that smallholder farmers need to understand and adopt.

Hence, in line with plans to train NEYA participants across states /communities of the NEYA initiative project implementation, after the training of co-facilitator, the step down training for all the NEYA participants across states of the project implementation began. The training ensued from 1^st to 21^st December 2022.

The training focused on Nigerian Agriculture Enterprise Curriculum (NAEC) as well as building the facilitation skills of the co facilitators.

Key points of the training are;

• Farm Business Cycles
• Keeping Farm Business Records
• Business Plan Worksheet
• Purchasing Decisions
• Cost and Benefits of Investment
• Cash flow cart
• Borrowing Sources and Amounts Simulation modules
• The agricultural value chain.

The objective of the training focused in fulfilling the holistic purpose of the NEYA initiative which to build the capacity of educated youths of the North-East region Nigeria to effectively participate in agricultural value chains thereby creating employment, generating wealth and contributing to the recovery and growth of the region which have been impoverished by the protracted insecurities challenges.

The key lesson for the month under consideration is that the best way to evaluate one’s success is by hearing from the perspectives of those who are the direct beneficiaries of the activity implemented. The participants came with a plethora of issues outlined as their expectations of the NEYA initiative. Most of these expectations are misconstrued and when clarity is given, they came to terms with it.

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

1. Dry season farming.
2. Group service providers; rice reapers and planting operation services

ANNEX 1

Table Showing Number of Participants Trained During the Farming as a Business Training Of NEYA Participants