…using Agriculture as a tool for Peace building and development

WARRI – In its quest to support the federal Government’s peace process in the Niger-Delta, Chevron Nigeria Limited decided to set up the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND) in 2010. The Foundation was established as a non-profit organisation in Nigeria to serve as an operational entity funded by the Niger Delta Partnership Initiative (NDPI) Foundation, which is supported by Chevron Corporation.

Specifically, PIND was established to help alleviate poverty and promote peace in the Niger Delta region by building dynamic, innovative programmes and multi-stakeholder partnerships that provide broad stakeholder support for projects in four main focus areas: economic development, capacity building, peace building and analysis and advocacy.

In May 2012, PIND opened the Economic Development Centre (EDC) in Egbokodo, Warri, to serve as a coordinating hub for development activities in the Niger Delta. In the short time since commencement of operations, the EDC has been serving as the physical and intellectual hub for PIND’s Economic Development programmes. It is instructive to note that PIND has chosen to use agriculture as one of the arrowheads of its programmes.

Within the EDC’s economic development programme are three value chain projects currently in their pilot phase, aimed at creating jobs and increasing income for Niger Delta residents through improved growth, productivity, and efficiency within the aquaculture, cassava and palm oil agricultural sub-sectors. These sub-sectors were selected based on their growth potentials and the involvement of large numbers of the poor.

In a nation seeking ways to diversify its oil-based economy, PIND has been providing a very viable alternative to oil and gas by exploring how to effectively harness and deploy project funds for the development of the region’s agricultural industry.

The programmes are not just concerned with producers, but also processors and improving access to appropriate technologies, trainings on organizational strengthening, and partnerships with financial institutions to provide access to finance, ensuring that Niger Delta businesses grow in as sustainable a way as possible.

Within a 3 year period, PIND has worked on some exemplary projects that have driven development discourse in the Niger Delta region. Within the past one year, PIND has embarked on the following projects:

· Aquaculture Project: Worked with a 550 member fish farmers’ association in Warri, Delta State, on a demonstration pond project to help instill best practices in the lucrative and popular venture of catfish farming, while partnering with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to strengthen their fish farming businesses using the National Agricultural Enterprise Curriculum (NAEC). Ninety percent (90%) of fish farmers in the country grow catfish and improved capacity would help small-scale producers increase their market share in this industry that made around US$1 billion in Nigeria’s GDP in 2009. PIND also embarked on a fish feed market study on behalf of the Delta State Government to help it formulate evidence-based policies on interventions in the fish feed industry in the State.

· Market Development for Cassava Sector: Among the issues PIND’s scoping study of the cassava sector revealed are weak linkages between small and commercial-scale farmers that cause wastage of farmers’ harvest, lack of access to lines of credit and inadequate business orientation on the part of the farmers. PIND’s programmes so far have helped to address these issues by establishing linkages between small-scale cassava farmers in the Edo State Cooperatives Farmers Agency to a large scale cassava processing firm (Thai Farms) and banking institutions, to ensure a guaranteed market for cassava farmers to boost income and increase in-country demand for cassava. PIND is also working with Lentus Farms to select and deploy appropriate technologies in the establishment of micro processing centres for processing cassava at or near the farm gate.

· Pilot training programme with the National Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR): Palm trees grow in twenty-four (24) of Nigeria’s thirty-six (36) states, including all the nine (9) States in the Niger-Delta, which account for fifty-seven per cent (57%) of the nation’s palm oil production and has enormous market potential with over eighty per cent (80%) of production coming from small-scale farmers.

Using the right type of technology, oil palm processors can increase their productivity and income by upwards of five per cent (5%). To make this happen, PIND has just concluded a pilot training programme with the National Institute for Oil Palm Research (NIFOR) to help train fabricators from Imo State in the manufacturing of processing equipment that can extract more palm oil than the technologies locally available. This means that palm oil farmers can better maximize their produce and increase their income. Additionally, PIND has introduced a motorized adjustable harvester to help improve harvesting of palm fruits. This machine widely used in major palm oil producing countries like Malaysia allows farmers to harvest palm fruits efficiently and safely by limiting the need for farmers to risk injury by climbing the palm trees to harvest the palm fruits.

Central to all of PIND’s programmes is the understanding that research, economic growth, peace-building and capacity building efforts are interlocking aspects that are necessary to ensure a systematic approach to creating an enabling environment for broad-based economic growth in the Niger Delta. Speaking on the development Executive Director – PIND, Sam Daibo says; “At PIND we believe that the best development approaches are tailor-made to the environment, rooted in a sound understanding of the underlying market systems and are open to the idea of partnership.”

Partnership is key to the success of the PIND Foundation. He also expressed gratitude to all the organizations that have partnered with the Foundation for the achievements of the programmes up till date. “Ours is a triumph of partnership at PIND. We have enjoyed the synergies that come from partnering with diverse stakeholders, from donors like USAID and the Department
for International Development (DfID), to state governments and major actors in commercial agriculture like Lentus Farms and Thai Farms International. With support from all these partners and more, PIND is relentlessly funding and implementing its programmes for the development of the Niger Delta,” says Daibo.

Also speaking,Andrew Fawthrop, Chairman and Managing Director, Chevron Nigeria Limited and a member of the Board of Trustees of PIND, expresses his happiness with the achievements of PIND in the area of agriculture. “Through the adoption of agriculture as a key programme area, PIND and its partners are able to achieve some level of economic development, capacity building, peace building and analysis and advocacy – all of which are key to the Foundation’s overarching goal of greater equitable growth in the Niger Delta,” says Fawthrop.