Sasakawa Africa Association (SAA) has invested over $1 million in agricultural interventions in Nasarawa State over the past two years, with farmers already benefiting from the program. SAA, a Japan government-funded initiative, began its operations in Nigeria since 1992, focusing on improving the production of crops such as maize, cassava, millet, sorghum, and rice.

During a visit to the Ministry of Agriculture in Nasarawa State, Godwin Atser, the Country Director of SAA, emphasized the organization’s commitment to reducing poverty, increasing food crop production and creating wealth for resource-constrained farmers. SAA works across the entire agricultural value chain, including production, processing, and market access.

“Our role is to see how we can contribute to poverty reduction to increase the productivity of food crops and to create wealth for resource constraint farmers,” the Country Director explained, adding that, “we work in four key countries; Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda and Mali. In Nigeria we are about 31 years now, we were established here in 1992. Since then we have been working in the agricultural space.”

Continuing, he said, “our contribution has shown that we have increased our productivity of the key crops that we work on, basically maize, cassava, Millet and sorghum, rice and some other value chains that will come in especially vegetables and the bio-fortified crops that we work on.“We work across the value chain, so it is not all about production, but we also ensure that processing is a key component of what we do and we ensure that farmers get access to market through our market orientated agriculture.”

The SAA Country Director further stated that, “in the last few years, we have worked in Nasarawa State and this year we want to take the media to field across all the value chains that we worked in so that they can have a feel of the contributions that we are making in Nasarawa.“Total investment in Nasarawa is more than a million dollars, currently, we are building two aggregation centres and these centres are in Obi local government and also in Lafia local government.”

Meanwhile, the SAA is currently constructing two aggregation centers in Obi and Lafia local governments, which will provide farmers with processing facilities for rice and enable them to adopt regenerative farming practices to boost production.

On his part, the Commissioner of Agriculture in Nasarawa State, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Mallam Isa Muhammad Iya expressed appreciation for SAA’s contributions to food production in the state. He said their intervention is in line with the policy thrust of the present administration and pledged government’s continued support and partnership.

Also speaking, the Program Manager of the Nasarawa Agricultural Development Program (NADP), Mr. Emmanuel Allanana, acknowledged SAA’s positive impact on farmers in the state, despite its relatively short presence of two years.

Communities visited during the media field trip include: Agabija, Shabu, Kwandere, Assakio, and Project Quarters in Lafia, as well as Doma in Doma LG and Nunku in Akwanga LG.

In all the communities, various farmers groups narrated their success stories as a result of SAA intervention. However, the communities visited also have common challenges, such as lack of marketing strategy, mobility, milling/granding machine etc.

Overall, Sasakawa Africa Association’s investment has significantly improved the livelihoods and agricultural practices in Nasarawa State, benefitting farmers and their communities.