The Chairperson of the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, CON, has called for increased investment in the first mile of agriculture to strengthen food security across Africa.
Kyari made the call at the High-Level Roundtable on IFAD14: Investing in the First Mile in West and Central Africa, held at the IFAD headquarters in Rome, Italy.
According to the minister, achieving food security goes beyond agricultural production, stressing that farmers must also have access to markets, opportunities to add value to their produce and the capacity to earn better incomes from their work.
He reaffirmed Nigeria’s commitment to the priorities of the 14th Replenishment of IFAD (IFAD14), which focuses on strengthening market integration, expanding rural employment and building resilience to climate change, conflict and economic shocks.
Kyari explained that investing in the first mile involves supporting smallholder farmers and rural communities through critical infrastructure that connects them to markets, including aggregation centres, storage facilities, processing plants and transportation networks.
Highlighting Nigeria’s experience, the minister cited the IFAD-supported Value Chain Development Programme (VCDP) as a successful model of how targeted investments can improve farmers’ livelihoods and strengthen agricultural value chains.
He disclosed that the programme had linked 62 per cent of participating smallholder farmers to reliable off-takers, providing them with dependable markets for their produce and reducing their vulnerability to exploitation by middlemen.
The programme has also significantly improved agricultural productivity with average wet-season rice yields among beneficiaries increasing from 1.5 tonnes to 4.5 tonnes per hectare, representing a threefold increase in output and contributing to improved farmers’ incomes.
Beyond boosting productivity, Kyari noted that the VCDP had created 11,890 permanent jobs in rural communities, demonstrating the potential of agricultural investment to drive employment generation and rural economic development.
The minister urged IFAD to strengthen its financing mechanisms and expand country-led programmes across West and Central Africa to ensure that smallholder farmers benefit more directly from agricultural investments.
He further called on the Fund to measure the success of its interventions not only by the volume of funds disbursed but also by their impact on farmers’ incomes, post-harvest losses and the creation of sustainable rural employment.
The high-level roundtable brought together ministers, development partners and other global stakeholders to discuss the future of IFAD’s interventions across West and Central Africa, with a shared commitment to ensuring that smallholder farmers are not excluded from the global food system.
