Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services

Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services, 2020-2025

Partner: Winrock International

Goal

1. Build the capacity of private extension service providers to deliver extension and advisory services to value chain stakeholders
2. Strengthen linkages between agricultural research institutions, agro-allied companies, the public and private extension providers, and agricultural value chain stakeholders

What we do

EUCORD is working with Winrock International and USAID, to implement the Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Extension & Advisory Services Activity, a 5-year project (2020-2025) that leverages the power of Nigerian entrepreneurship to facilitate learning, replication, and scale around alternative models of extension to increase access and adoption of improved agricultural technologies and practices for two million smallholder producers in Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Niger states. The Activity works through existing small and medium enterprises (SMEs) that focus on the information and service needs of the “average” farming household – the representative majority of smallholders within the target value chains who produce the greater part of the production.

The Activity uses Lean production principles and tools to develop a deep understanding of the existing production systems to identify the most promising opportunities and the most important constraints to improve efficiency and increase return on investment for farmers. The Activity leverages SMEs as change agents around the identified on-farm opportunities in the cowpea, maize, soybean, rice, and aquaculture value chains. EUCORD's role is to supervise State Coordinators and to contribute to value chain technical knowledge and farmer context.

Accomplishments

• Winrock organized a highly successful impact workshop that was co-hosted with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
• 311 MSMEs stepped up as change catalysts, delivering innovation, productivity-enhancing services, and market-driven solutions to over 2.76 million farmers.
• MSMEs in our network invested over $28 million into expanding and deepening their businesses, proving that smallholder-oriented service provision is both impactful and profitable.
• Farmers responded - our efforts led to adoption rates exceeding 80%, demonstrating the power of market-aligned solutions.
• We institutionalized private-sector-led extension within Nigeria’s agricultural framework, with our work shaping the Extension Training Manual and the launch of the National Agricultural Extension Policy.
• We strengthened access to financing for smallholder farmers, rolling out input credit models with 95% repayment rates and facilitating over $57.6 million in financing to help farmers invest in productivity and market growth.