IFAD-funded Project Creates Over 5000 Decent Jobs in Niger Delta
An IFAD-funded project, Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises-Niger Delta (LIFE-ND), said it created 5194 decent jobs for women and youths in the Niger Delta in three years.
The National Project Coordinator, LIFE-ND, Engr. Abiodun Sanni who made this known in media roundtable in Port Harcourt, said the project facilitated 700 incubators in the region between 2019 and 2022.
He said LIFE-ND was co-funded by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), the Federal Government, some states in Niger Delta and the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
Abiodun said the objective of the project was to ensure enhanced income, food security and job creation for rural youths and women through agribusiness development on a sustainable basis.
He said LIFE-ND had fostered partnership with over 15 technical and financial organisations for support services and access to needed resources for the beneficiaries.
The national project coordinator said that the project was being implemented in six of the nine states that made up the Niger Delta – Abia, Cross River, Bayelsa, Delta, Edo and Ondo.
He said it had also promoted the development of environmentally friendly production cluster facilities for the enterprise commodities promoted across the six states.
The national project coordinator explained that LIFE-ND was designed to be implemented over a 12-year period in two phases of six years each.
He said the first phase which commenced in 2019 would be completed in 2025, adding that it had seven priority commodities/enterprises – cassava, rice, oil palm, fishery, poultry, cocoa and plantain.
Abiodun called for media collaboration with LIFE-ND in the implementation of its programmes, saying the media had a crucial role to play in the success of its operation.
Some of the beneficiaries, Fashakin Victor from Ondo, Michael Stanley from Delta and Montul Nathaniel from Cross River said LIFE-ND had helped them to establish agricbusiness.
Victor and Stanley both poultry farmers said they now produced thousands of birds which they sold while Nathaniel, a rice farmer, said he now produced and packaged four tonnes of rice.
Also speaking, the General Secretary, Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE), Dr Iyobosa Uwugiaren, emphasized the need for the project to engage the media adequately in publicizing its activities.
Uwugiaren said LIFE-ND had achieved a lot but needed to have its achievements brought to the notice of the funders and the public through robust and sustainable media engagement.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that participants at the roundtable included media executives from across the country as well as LIFE-ND officials and beneficiaries.
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