Sahel Consulting, an agriculture and nutrition firm has partnered with other stakeholders on a project that is intended to curb the devastating impact of climate change on food production in Nigeria.
Speaking during the launch of the project titled: ‘Building agricultural system resilience in Nigeria through an effective early warning system’, in Abuja, Adegoroye Temi, who is the Managing Partner at Sahel Consulting stated that it was birthed due to the rising need to strengthen food systems in the continent, especially Nigeria with the continued shortage in food supplies.
According to him, the project will be implemented through collaboration with relevant government agencies, to ensure that existing infrastructures are strengthened to carry out their mandates.
“We have talked about how Africa has the potential to feed herself and the rest of the world and also to ensure that we increase our productivity, reduce our losses and be able to make food available and we bring that home to Nigeria where we are currently experiencing food crisis and we have been in this long before now,”he said.
He explained that these challenges are caused by several factors such as political issues, microeconomic issues, security and systemic issues in our food system, adding that beyond that is the impact of climate change in food systems.
“Climate extremes are real and it’s a big deal, the call for this project came from Bill and Melinda Gate, we thought it was a call to serve so today we are starting a very important journey to build an agricultural system that is resilient and can face the issues that are thrown at us by the extremes of climate change. We are starting a journey together that will see us build a coordinated platform for early warning response in Nigeria.”
Story was adapted from Business Day.
