Rural-Urban Food Supply Chains for Prosperity

A joint study by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has identified ways in which rural farming communities can benefit from rising food demand in urban centers of the developing world.

“Meeting the rising urban demand for food can increase the incomes of the rural poor, most of whom derive their livelihoods from small and family farm agriculture, said FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva. “This could generate much-needed employment and development prospects for the people who will remain in the countryside of developing countries while also making healthier food easier to access in cities.””

In order to achieve this, there must be greater investment to develop the value chain, which in plain english means that we have to build "Better roads, reliable and extensive electrification, refrigerated transportation and better storage facilities".

The report also references countries where this is already taking place: Bangladesh, China, India and Ethiopia.  In these countries, farmers have access to inputs like high-yielding sees, new farming techniques, fertilizer and pesticide, cold storage facilities and even credit facilities.

Some of these innovations are available in some parts of Nigeria but what we need is more deliberate policy formulation and implementation to ensure a direct pipeline of food supply from rural farmers to dinner tables of urban households.  

We will be able to reverse the rural-urban drift If farmers can increase their income dramatically through a well-designed and sustainable rural-urban value chain.

National Directorate on Employment wakes from deep slumber →

It seems the National Directorate on Employment (NDE) is finally awake. Hear this:

“A statement released, Monday, by the Deputy Director, Information and Public Relations of the National Directorate of Employment, NDE, Edmund Onwuliri, said the registration was aimed at collecting up-to-date data of unemployed Nigerians.
Mr. Onwuliri said the registration was in compliance with NDE’s mandate to obtain and maintain a data bank on unemployment and vacancies in the country.
The deputy director, according to the statement, said the exercise would enable the directorate to serve as a clearing house linking job seekers with existing vacancies in government agencies and the private sector.”

Why would they be doing this when it seems their primary responsibility has already been taken over by the Office of the Vice-President through its various social intervention programmes?

We need to think twice about whether we actually need this agency.

FAO Newsroom: 108 million people affected by food insecurity →

There is rising global insecurity due to crisis and extreme weather conditions. Various international development agencies are trying to make a difference. These include the European Union, United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), World Food Programme (WFP) and UNICEF.

“The dramatic increase reflects the trouble people have in producing and accessing food due to conflict, record-high food prices in local markets in affected countries and extreme weather conditions such drought and erratic rainfall caused by El Niño.

Civil conflict is the driving factor in nine of the 10 worst humanitarian crises, underscoring the strong linkage between peace and food security, says the Global Report on Food Crises 2017 report.”

Like many other African nations, Nigeria is not carrying her weight in the global food production. We prefer to take the easy way out and import from Asia, Europe and the United States.

Its time to treat our underperformance as a major crisis. We need to invest more in large scale agriculture. This investment has to extend to improved infrastructure including roads into rural areas and rail transport to bring produce to market.

We also need to build better air cargo facilities to export perishables to markets in Europe and the Middle East. These are just a few of the many requirments.

Right now it seems the government is doing the least it can in order to gain momentary acclaim. Its a shame.

Commentary: Whistleblowing Policy in Nigerian Institutions

Paper: Effect of System Factors on Whistleblowing Attitude of Nigerian Banks Employees: A Conceptual Perspective - Covenant University Repository

Whistleblowing has become a central topic of discussion with the recent publication of the Federal Government's whistleblowing policy.

A research article published last year by sociologists at Covenant University has identified the need for Nigerian institutions to encourage whistleblowing among their staff as a deterrence to unethical practices.

Here is the abstract

Whistleblowing provides a self-correcting mechanism for an organization to prevent unethical practices. Lessons from collapsed businesses around the world show that organisations do not just collapse, but rather it is a gradual process resulting from a series of inappropriate acts left unaddressed. This paper is based on a conceptual perspective. Past studies on whistleblowing were reviewed, gaps and weaknesses identified to develop a conceptual framework on whistleblowing reporting attitude of bank employees in Nigeria. The conceptual framework is anchored on the Resource Dependence (RD) and Planned Behaviour (PB) theories. The paper provides important lessons for promoting ethical practices in organisations and the society at large. Based on the gaps in literature, this paper recommends among others a performance review system that is tied to rewarding whistleblowing; ways to protect whistleblowers and the need to strengthen organizational support structures for whistleblowing.

The paper can be downloaded for free here.

Many organisations in Nigeria already have whistle-blowing policies in place. For example, First Bank of Nigeria has a whistleblowing policy which is available online. I'm sure that many Nigrian organisation are in the process of developing whistle-blowing policies. Scholarly works such as this would be a valuable resource.