Facilitators Training Guide :Training Manual for Horticulture Value Chain SMEs on Financial Literacy and Development of Business Plans
Date
2022
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Publisher
IFDC
Abstract
In Nigeria’s horticulture sector, three crops - tomato, onion, and okra – constitute products in which the country is currently unable to bridge the existing local annual supply gap estimated at 13 million metric tons. The horticulture sector, to which the crops belong, employs substantial numbers of workers, which include women and youths; this creates opportunities for increased resilience of households. The Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Nigeria (EKN) recently unveiled the HortiNigeria Program to ensure a sustainable gender and youth-inclusive horticulture sub-sector that contributes to food nutrition and security in the country. The program is being implemented by the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC) and its consortium partners East-West Seed Knowledge Transfer (EWS-KT), Wageningen University & Research (WUR) and KIT Royal Institute. HortiNigeria is a four-year program being implemented in Kaduna and Kano states in the north-west and then Ogun and Oyo States in the south-west; it aims to boost the productivity and income of 60,000 smallholder farmers (50% youth and 40% women) through eco-efficient agronomic practices. In addition to enhancing productivity and incomes, HortiNigeria would also sustainably bring an additional 15,000 hectares of land under cultivation, promote innovations and regional diversifications to reduce seasonal risks facing 2,000 entrepreneurial farmers, increase access to finance for 50 agro-SMEs, enhance sector coordination and facilitate 200 business-to-business linkages in all four states. Furthermore, the program, which focuses primarily on tomato, okra, onion, and pepper value chains, is devoted only to the domestic markets
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Keywords
Horticulture, Smallholder farmers, Gender Equity