Oyo To Partner IITA-CGIAR On Advancement Of Cassava, Cocoa Value Chain

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IBADAN – Oyo State is set to partner with the Consultative Group for Inter­national Agricultural Research (CGIAR), the world’s largest 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.

Sandra Milach, Chief Scien­tist of the CGIAR 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 and that having in­vested in processing and value addition, it will benefit from the partnership, which is 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 will 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.

Earlier, 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.

“So that is why I am here spending a full week with my colleague, Bernard, and also with important partners, and it has really been a very important week of learning.

“You have a wonderful coun­try, and Oyo is a wonderful state, with a lot of potential for agri­culture, for food transformation. We are very aligned with the gov­ernor and with the leadership of Nigeria in this mission.”

She added that the partner­ship would equally help the state to bolster its achievements in agribusiness development, as according to her, science has an important role to play in raising the value proposition of agri­business.

She said, “In CGIAR, we are really on this mission of asking the question, how can we turn all the science we do into a real val­ue proposition, real business? We see a very important role for our science to help to raise the value proposition of business.