KANO- No fewer than 500 women would benefit from World Bank-assisted Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP) in Kano, the project’s Task Team Leader, Elhadj Adama Toure, said.
Toure made the disclosure when he paid a courtesy visit to the state’s Commissioner for Agriculture, Dr Yusuf Gawuna, in Kano.
The team leader said women and youth would be trained in agribusiness with support for take-off grants, with phase one of the exercise consisting 170 persons to be empowered in a couple of months.
This was in addition to the targeted 10,000 small and medium-scale commercial farmers along three value chains of rice, maize and dairy, he added.
He explained that the CADP was recently restructured by World Bank, where women and youth component were added to enhance speedy implementation and prompt disbursement to project beneficiaries so as to enhance performance and reduce youth unemployment in the country.
The task team leader commended the Kano State Government for approving the request of the commissioner of agriculture to continue the CADP implementation in the state, which was temporarily suspended for over 16 months.
Responding, the commissioner expressed delight over the state government’s approval for the continuation of the project in the state.
He said “government decided to continue with the implementation of the project after considering the laudable activities placed in the restructured project and the status of Kano State in Nigeria’s agricultural position.”
Gawuna, however, informed the visiting World Bank team that Kano State would take advantage of the restructured project, especially the women and youths programme for employment generation and the small and medium-scale entrepreneurs.
He said the initiative was in line with the state government’s policy, as the present administration had remained consistent in supporting the development of agriculture in the state over the last four years.
This, he said, had manifested by the establishment of seven agriculture based institutes where women and youths received agro-entrepreneur training and grants to become gainfully employed.
The commissioner then appealed to the World Bank to approve the implementation of second phase roads under the project in order to close the infrastructure gap for enhanced agricultural commercialisation.