The Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) has estimated that 60,000 individuals and 300,000 farm household members are to benefit from the project in six participating states across the federation.
The APPEALS Project Operations Manager, Dr. Salisu Garba, disclosed this on Monday, at a workshop organized by the project for journalists with the theme: “Development Communication: A case study of reporting the implementation process of the project in Nasarawa.”
He said the workshop was organised for journalists on development communication, saying about 10,000 beneficiaries were expected to benefit in each state.
Garba added that the project also had 196,045 indirect beneficiaries from a total of 87 Business Alliances and out-grower schemes established across the six participating states.
He listed the states and number of the beneficiaries to include: Cross River – 19, Enugu-5, Kaduna–16, Kano-25, Kogi-4, and Lagos -18.
Presenting an overview of the project, Garba said it had empowered 8,078 youths and women with business, technical and life skills training, support to business planning, facilitation of business name registration with the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
In addition, it also provided start up grants for the establishment of commercially viable businesses and mentorship of the beneficiaries with continued support from established agribusiness entrepreneurs.
He said five percent of the total number of Women and Youth Empowerment Programme (WYEP) beneficiaries of 10,000, representing at least five per cent of the World Bank’s funding, had been set aside for People With Disabilities and Special Needs (PWDSN) currently being trained and empowered.
“The WYEP beneficiaries are open to choose any other value chains, but within the selected priority value chains of the project.
“This flexibility has enabled the youths to select commodities of high sustainability with quick returns on investment and high potential for foreign exchange generation and wealth creation”, Garba said.
He stressed that a lot of achievements had been recorded in the three states of Kano, Kaduna and Cross River, where no fewer than 5,052 farmers had been linked to market outlets.
“The project outcome indicator for productivity increase was 35 per cent for each value chain and as at the mid-term review in February 2021, all the value chains have surpassed the 35 per cent targeted yield increases from the baseline figures, across all the value chains.”