By Gabriel Ewepu and Fortune Eromosele

THE Federal Government, Tuesday, assured Nigerians to use technology to galvanize food production as it expressed commitment to diversifying the economy using the agricultural sector.

The Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, Dr Ernest Umakhihe, gave the assurance at the opening ceremony of Information Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D) for Monitoring and Evaluation for FGN/IFAD Nigeria Projects, in Abuja.

Umakhihe who was represented by the Director of Planning and Policy Coordination in the Ministry, Mr Ibrahim Tanimu, pointed out that the ICT4D training is an important part of President Bola Tinubu’s agenda of transforming the agricultural sector as far as the Renewed Hope Agenda is concerned.

He maintained that agriculture has to be diversified through the use of technology, hence without technology, Nigeria cannot achieve much in food security. He said: “So, what IFAD is doing here is completely in alignment with the direction of the Federal Government of Nigeria.

”Also, the Country Director of, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD, Nigeria, Dede Ekoue, while speaking with journalists on the sidelines of the workshop, explained how significant the training is to the sector. Ekoue said the training aims to use the power of digital solutions to improve the monitoring and evaluation of IFAD’s projects in Nigeria.

She further stated that the essence of digital training in monitoring and evaluation is to also use ICT4D to scale up results for farmers. She said when ICT4D is used for the solution, IFAD will be able to not only make sure that staff use this solution to work on the project but also to have farmers use these solutions to give feedback on the project and feedback on how IFAD can improve.

“The essence of this training is to use the power of digital solutions to improve the monitoring and evaluation of our project. “It is important because the Federal Government of Nigeria and IFAD are investing heavily in projects and these projects must yield the best result; to ensure that it yields the best result, we need to use the digital tool to track the results, to track whether these results are in line with the objectives, to ensure that these results are efficient, to learn also from these results, to continue improving the project.

“So the essence of this digital training in monitoring and evaluation is to use ICT4D to scale up our results for farmers. When we use the ICT4D solution, we will be able to not only make sure that staff use this solution to work on the project but also to have farmers use these solutions to give feedback on the project and feedback on how we can improve.

“It is making the monitoring and evaluation more participatory and more efficient and know what result we are achieving in each state and local government and how we can improve on those results”, she said.

Also speaking, an ICT4D Consultant, Dana Sprole, said through this training, they are hoping to impact and share more knowledge about ICT and highlight the collaboration that is necessary for bringing in farmers for the program to be successful.

“Through the different sessions that we are covering, the hope is that they will be able to impact the knowledge that they learn here and incorporate farmers’ and farmers’ perspectives into the work that they are doing”, Sprole said.