Agriculture

Group calls for improved agriculture innovations to boost food security

Published

2 years ago

April 30, 2025

Mariam Sanni

A Non Governmental Organization, NGO in the agricultural sector, Self Help Africa, SHA has called for improved agricultural innovations to enhance food security and support farmers.

The Country Director, Joy Aderele made this call during in a media chat at the National Mid-term review for the abatement of short-lived climate pollutants in Nigerian Agricultural sector project held in Abuja .

According to her, a recent learning visit revealed that many innovative solutions exist in institutes but are not reaching farmers.

She added that there is a need for policies that would enable researchers in the agricultural sector to disseminate their innovations more effectively.

She emphasized the need for a protocol that allows researchers to share their work without fear of it being taken over is emphasized.

“So we just returned from a learning visit last week, where we had gone to some institutes, great institutes across the country, and I was surprised and amazed to see that we have a lot of innovation sitting in this institute, professors that have done a lot of things that will even make us not to have any issue a young guy in Nigeria. But this learning or innovation is not trickling down. People don’t know about it. The average farmer in my village does not know about the innovation.

“ So I would say that one thing that the ministry should do is to bring up this protocol that enable researchers in the agri space to disseminate their their data, their innovation freely so that farmers and our food security can improve,” she stated.

Aderele highlighted the major achievement of reducing bush burning among farmers, which improves soil and environmental health.

She explained that the promotion of climate-smart agriculture has led to higher crop yields, benefiting farmers and the community.

According to her, Post-harvest losses have been reduced, with rice residue now used to make briquettes, providing an additional income source for farmers.

The country Director said awareness of climate change has increased among farmers, leading to a shift away from traditional, harmful practices like bush burning.

Aderele revealed that the current pilot project in Benue state is aimed to be replicated across all 36 states and the FCT in Nigeria.

She noted that the organization has worked with over 500,000 small farmers globally, with a focus on making farming attractive to young people.

She added that the organization plans to share the lessons learned from the pilot project to improve farming practices nationwide.

The Director, department of agriculture land and climate change management device, Federal Ministry off Agriculture, Muhammed Bello emphasized the importance of sustainable land management for food security and the government’s goal of ensuring healthy soil for farmers.

He surged that the project on abatement of short-lived climate change pollutants is highlighted as a key initiative to clean up and fertilize the land.

He explained that the collaboration is aimed to replicate the project’s achievements and expand its reach across Nigeria, ensuring that more farmers benefit from healthy soil.

Share on Facebook

Agriculture

PULA Co-founder , Goslinga Urges Flood Insurance Expansion to Safeguard Nigerian Agriculture

Published

1 week ago

November 1, 2026

The Gleamer

Joel Ajayi

For millions of smallholder farmers in Nigeria, a single flood can erase a season of hard work in hours. It is this risk that agricultural insurance firm, Pula, has spent the last 12 years trying to solve across Africa.

Rose Goslinga, Co-founder and President of Pula, who was in Nigeria this week, says while the company has made inroads, it is barely scratching the surface in a country of over 200 million people.

Speaking in an interview in Abuja, Goslinga traced the genesis of the company to a simple but devastating reality for African farmers.

“So Pula is a company that started about 12 years ago and we started working on a problem of climate risk. So the risk that farmers do plant but at the end of the season, not to any fault of their own, there could be a drought, there could be flooding, like lots of flooding. And you may have done everything right. You may have planted the seed, you may have worked your farm, but if there is a flood you could lose everything,” she said.

She explained that the company’s model is built on data that allows insurers and reinsurers to underwrite those risks.

“We knew that there was enough data to protect those farmers, to get those risks underwritten by insurers and reinsurance companies. And so we started with that idea to ensure those farms,” she said.

According to her, Pula now operates in 13 African markets, and in Nigeria it partners with leading underwriters including Leadway and AXA Mansard to insure farmers against flood and other climate risks and to pay out when losses occur. The company has recently expanded beyond insurance into using its data to give farmers market access, as seen in its work with cocoa farmers in Cross River State.

On the general apathy towards insurance in Nigeria, Goslinga admitted the perception is a major hurdle.

“Farmers will think that insurance is for rich people with cars, right? That’s how they think about insurance – is for people who own a car, people who are better off. We think about insurance as something that farmers may not necessarily want but that they definitely need,” she said.

To overcome this, she said Pula embeds insurance into services farmers already seek out – credit, seeds and fertilizers – through aggregators.

“So we work together with organizations that reach these farmers, whether they are farm aggregators. In Nigeria we work together with Babban Gona, with AFEX, with Thrive Agriculture, those organizations that are giving them loans and we package insurance together with those loans because when the rains come they want seeds, they want fertilizers, they’ll not necessarily ask for insurance but if they lose their crop later on, the people who gave them seeds and fertilizers on credit will want those investments to be protected and so that is how we reach them,” she stated.

She added: “We might also, we work with Bank of Agriculture and with Bank of Agriculture we embed insurance into the credit that Bank of Agriculture gives to farmers and to the aggregators. So we are very much a partnership oriented organization to partner with farmers to do so.”

When asked about the scale of impact in Nigeria, Goslinga was candid about the challenge of size.

“So I would say in Nigeria we’ve probably, it’s still small because you’re a huge country. So even if you reach a million farmers, we’re still been talking about 2-3% of the population, right? It’s a huge country. So I would say we’ve reached about… I think our largest, the most successful year we probably had up to a million farmers or something like that,” she disclosed.

She noted that uptake fluctuates with partnerships and government support for agricultural credit, pointing to renewed momentum this year from institutions like the Bank of Agriculture.

On the company’s new focus on floodplain farming, she said floods, not drought, remain Nigeria’s biggest agricultural threat.

“So we definitely think that in Nigeria the biggest risk is not drought, it’s floods. Floods is the thing that really can wipe away, and quite suddenly also wipe away the benefits, or the work that farmers have done,” she said.

She argued that Nigeria has immense potential in rice, particularly in irrigated areas, but that potential is highly vulnerable.

“We think that there is a lot of potential for this because obviously Nigeria has one of the highest potential yields for rice I’ve seen. Up north in like Kebbi State, people getting 10 metric tons, you know, average in Nigeria is like basically three metric tons, but if you compare it to other African countries it can be as low as one to two, so you are very, very highly productive in the rice space, particularly in some of the irrigated areas. But those farmers at the same time also can really dramatically lose their crop due to floods,” she said.

She therefore called for a national response: “So we think that there is a lot of potential to put together a kind of a national flood insurance program together with organizations like NEMA and the government, because there is a strong role for government. Because as I said, farmers don’t wake up thinking that they want insurance, they think I want to plant, and so you do need that role of the government.”

On climate change awareness, Goslinga said while many farmers may not use the technical term, they feel the impact daily.

“They may not necessarily always have the words for climate change or… but they feel it, right? They feel it. They feel that the rains don’t always come on the 15th of May anymore, right? They are supposed to come in May but then they don’t. So I think they may not have always had the right words, but they certainly feel it and they feel it today,” she said.

She praised the resilience of farmers: “And so I certainly think that farmers also adapt today already because they are very intelligent and they can’t… they don’t have the room to decide that they… they don’t have the wiggle room. Their pockets don’t allow for them to have wiggle room. So they already have to adapt and make those changes.”

On expansion plans, Goslinga said Nigeria remains a priority, with less than 3% of farmers currently covered by insurance.

“So definitely there’s a lot of work in Nigeria in the area of insurance. There’s only, like I said, there’s only like 2 to 3% that we’re currently covering. And I would say that, so going deeper, making sure that there are more farmers (are covered),” she said.

Share on Facebook