Abuja Enterprise Agency (AEA) and the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) have signed a technical and scientific Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) aimed at accelerating youth participation in agriculture through structured agribusiness development and innovation support.
The MoU was executed last week at the Conference Room of AEA’s Entrepreneurial Complex, Jahi District, Abuja.
According to the agreement, the partnership is designed to provide business development and innovation support services to agro-enterprises, particularly beneficiaries of both AEA and IITA programmes, while promoting and encouraging large-scale youth engagement in agriculture across the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) and beyond.
Speaking at the signing ceremony, Acting Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (MD/CEO), AEA, Dr. Chudi Ugwuada-Ezirigwe, expressed satisfaction with the collaboration, describing it as a strategic alignment that reinforces AEA’s mandate of enterprise development and youth empowerment.
On his part, Deputy Director-General and Head of Partnerships and Delivery at IITA, Dr. Tahirou Abdoulaye, who signed on behalf of the Institute, stated that the MoU places strong emphasis on the business side of agriculture, with a target of training over 100,000 young people within the next five years.
Under the agreement, AEA is to:
*Support the establishment of co-operative groups for trained beneficiaries;
*Provide access to its comprehensive database of past beneficiaries to enable needs assessments and gap analysis
*and facilitate access to finance and related business support services, particularly through the FCT MSME One-Stop Shop.
The Agency will also facilitate technical support for the establishment of a NAFDAC Common Facility;
*Implement entrepreneurship-focused agricultural programmes for school children as well as provide complementary support to IITA’s research efforts in advancing agro-enterprise development.
In return, IITA is expected to:
*Provide technical training across identified agribusiness value chains for qualified beneficiaries;
*Offer complementary agribusiness support services alongside AEA and
*Provide space and requisite infrastructure for the establishment of a NAFDAC Common Facility.
IITA is a non-profit international research institution based in Ibadan, Oyo State, that develops agricultural innovations to address Africa’s critical challenges of hunger, malnutrition, poverty, and natural resource degradation.
Over the past 59 years, the institute has contributed significantly to improved livelihoods, food and nutrition security, and employment generation across Nigeria.
AEA, on the other hand, is the FCT’s flagship institution for micro, small, and medium enterprise (MSME) development and poverty reduction.
Established in 2006 by the Federal Capital Territory Administration (FCTA) in collaboration with the UK Department for International Development (DFID), AEA focuses on enterprise growth through access to finance, business planning, entrepreneurship skills development, rural enterprise development, access to workspaces, and policy advocacy.
*PHOTO CAPTION: Management teams of both AEA and IITA after signing the MoU.
