The Board of Directors of the African Development Bank has recently approved an ADF loan of $152.12 million (UA98.78 million) and an ADF grant of $0.38 million (UA0.25 million) to finance Nigeria's Agricultural Transformation Agenda Support Program Phase 1 (ATASP-1).
The overall goal of the programme is to transform agriculture into a profitable business. ATASP-1 seeks to promote employment generation and shared wealth creation along the commodity value chains, as well as food and nutrition security. Its specific objective is to sustainably increase the income of smallholder farmers and rural entrepreneurs engaged in the production, processing, storage and marketing of the selected commodity value chains. Reports from Bank funded projects indicate that while farmers have made significant gains by adopting improved crop varieties and farming practices, productivity falls far short of the full potential along the commodity value chains.
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