IN order to appreciate his continued effort and enthusiastic drive to support agricultural transformation in Nigeria through science, the Agricultural Research and Innovation Fellowship for Africa (ARIFA), has honoured the current Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) and former Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Sonny Echono.
Echomo, received first FARA Medal of Honour during the extra ordinary steering committee meeting of ARIFA in Accra, Ghana, recently.
An architect by training and a well-established agribusiness entrepreneur, Echono comes to his current position with strong accolades and solid footprint in the agriculture sector.
He was the serving Permanent Secretary at the commencement of the Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT), an African Development Bank initiative that later became a continental programme.
Since 2020, the Forum for Agricultural Research in Africa (FARA) has been in partnership with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFund) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria to build strategic competence through ARIFA, with a goal of systematic infusion of a new crop of professionals in the country, for the delivery of commensurate competencies in Agricultural Research for Development (AR4D). The partnership leverages the best practice of the South-South & Triangular Cooperation (SSTC) strategy of FARA to contribute to building the knowledge-based economy through TETFund Centers of Excellence (TCoE) across the country.
To date, TETFund has supported close to 100 fellows drawn from a cohort of Nigerian academia to undertake tailor-made MSc programmes in various fields of sciences related to agriculture in Brazilian universities led by a consortium of the Brazilian Federation of International Education (FAUBAI) and the Universidade Federal de Viçosa (UFV)-Federal University of Viçosa.