AEA, IITA SIGN MOU TO DRIVE YOUTH PARTICIPATION IN AGRIBUSINESS.
By: Emmanuel Tortiv.
The 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 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, the Acting Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of 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, Dr. Tahirou Abdoulaye, Deputy Director-General and Head of Partnerships and Delivery at IITA, 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 programs for school children, and 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 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.
The Abuja Enterprise Agency, on the other hand, is the Federal Capital Territory’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.
