In a push to tackle Nigeria’s fragmented agricultural value chain and boost food production, the Federal Government, through the National Agriculture Development Fund (NADF), has announced a new N19.5 billion pilot scheme to deliver subsidised high-quality farm inputs to 50,000 smallholder farmers nationwide.
Speaking at the official unveiling of the agency’s new Internal Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Platform in Abuja on Tuesday, Lanre Wilton-Wadell, Special Technical Assistant to the NADF Executive Secretary, explained that the programme is designed to connect farmers directly with processors, strengthen market access, and secure a steady supply of raw materials for Nigeria’s agro-processing industry.
Under the programme called AgGrow, NADF will fully finance the procurement of critical inputs, including seeds, fertilisers, and agrochemicals, which will be distributed through about 40 agro-processors operating structured outgrower networks. Farmers will receive the inputs at a 50 percent subsidy, with processors repaying half of the cost to NADF at harvest.
“We came up with this model because 70% of smallholder farmers face constraints accessing quality seeds and lack the knowledge of good agricultural practices. At the same time, processors struggle to secure raw materials sustainably and at fair prices due to middlemen and market inefficiencies,” Wilton-Wadell said.
The initiative targets four major crops — rice, maize, cassava, and soya beans — covering six months for grains and up to twelve months for cassava’s production cycle.
The programme also has a strong focus on inclusion, with 40 percent of beneficiaries expected to be women and 20 percent youth, while promoting crop insurance among farmers to protect investments.
As part of its structure, the scheme emphasises transparency and accountability. All participating farmers must be registered with a BVN or NIN, and their farms geo-tagged and biometrically verified. Weekly monitoring, third-party field audits, and strict reporting requirements for processors will ensure that inputs are properly used and that NADF’s funds are recovered.
The Executive Secretary of NADF, Mohammed Ibrahim, while addressing participants at the unveiling, emphasised that the M&E platform would digitally monitor all aspects of the programme — from input distribution to farm productivity — while strengthening identity management through geospatial technology and biometric registration. This, he said, would ensure that only genuine farmers benefit from the initiative.
He said the innovative platform is a product of extensive internal development and lessons drawn from months of consultations with key players, including the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and commercial banks.
“The smallholder farmer is at the heart of what we are doing. This platform ensures that every seed, every input, and every naira invested is properly tracked from distribution to usage, so that we can keep learning, improving, and delivering results aligned with national priorities,” Ibrahim said.
According to Ibrahim, the platform is built on two pillars: robust identity management and digital supervision. It integrates geospatial technology to map and identify each farm and farmer, ensuring that farm size, location, and input usage are verifiable and traceable. Farmers will be digitally profiled to eliminate fraud and ensure only genuine smallholders benefit.
He explained that the platform not only monitors how subsidised inputs are distributed but also checks how they are used and the results they yield in the field. It serves as a critical bridge for the agro-support programme the Fund plans to launch next week, which aims to link primary agricultural production directly with agro-processing value chains.
“We are closing the gap between what happens on the farm and the needs of our processors. This is why we have engaged reputable M&E companies to work as our eyes and boots on the ground, all coordinated through a national structure that includes regional and state coordinators,” he noted.
The NADF boss noted that the new system was shaped by six months of intensive stakeholder engagement with the CBN and a further month with commercial banks to understand what works and what must change in agricultural finance. “We know there is no perfect system, but our focus is continuous improvement. Every lesson learned is documented and institutionalised,” he added.
The platform will also support digital extension services, helping farmers adopt best practices in land preparation, seed selection, plant genetics, nutrition, and soil-specific crop blends.
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“We want to build farmers’ capacities so they get better yields and bigger returns,” Ibrahim stressed.
The rollout of this digital monitoring tool, according to NADF, signals a new era of data-driven agricultural management in Nigeria — one where every input is tracked, every farm is mapped, and every harvest is accounted for.
In his remarks, Olushola Omole, a representative of the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) vendors, commended NADF’s fresh approach, which directly involves independent M&E partners to drive accountability.
“There hasn’t been a time when M&E vendors were brought together like this to align on expectations and targets,” Omole said. “This is a new beginning, and we believe it will empower us to deliver results that truly benefit the farmers and processors.”
The pilot is expected to run nationwide across all six geopolitical zones, covering about 12 to 15 states. According to NADF, it is envisioned as a blueprint for replicable, performance-driven agricultural support programmes that can be scaled to reach even more farmers in the future.
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