Oyo State is to partner with the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR,a publicly-funded agrifood research network, which has the International Institute for Tropical Agriculture (IITA) as one of its research centres, on advancing cassava and cocoa value chain.
Chief scientist of CGIAR, Sandra Milach, and the deputy director-general of the IITA, Bernard Vanlauwe, stated this on Friday shortly after a meeting with the Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde, noting that the state has great potential in agriculture.
She added that having invested in processing and value addition, it will benefit from the partnership aimed at developing plans on how to advance cassava and cocoa value chains.
Speaking with newsmen shortly after the meeting, which had in attendance the director-general of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA), Dr Debo Akande and the senior executive assistant on General Duties, Chief Bayo Lawal, Milach noted that the partnership would enable Oyo State, as one of the major producers of cassava and a state with potential in cocoa production, to understand what is important as well as the bottlenecks of the value chains the state is working on and how it can be assisted to find solutions.
She added that the CGIAR would work hand-in-hand with the Oyo State Government to help to understand and come up with solutions on the processing industry’s roles in helping farmers adopt better varieties of cassava and cocoa and connecting the value chain from end to end to ensure food security, boost agribusiness and uplift farmers.
“We just met the governor, and we talked especially about cassava. We know Oyo State is one of the major producers and it is also investing in processing and value addition. And we talked about cocoa.
“So, these are the two crops that IITA has a lot of expertise in. And we have agreed to develop plans together with the governor on how we can advance both value chains,” Vanlauwe said while corroborating Milach on the purpose of the meeting with the governor.
Milach said, “I lead the science of CGIAR, we are the largest global agriculture public goods organisation. We have a very important mission, which is how to continue helping farmers and communities across the globe in transforming food systems, water, land as well as systems. Our focus is to create food security for the African continent, and for other parts of the globe as well. But Africa is a very important continent for us.”
