Feed the Future Nigeria Agribusiness Investment Activity Quarterly Progress Report

The program aims to strengthen the business enabling environment to promote private sector investment in agriculture, with a focus on the rice, maize, soybean, cowpea, and aquaculture value chains. The program's goal is to foster commercially viable partnerships between thousands of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and producer organizations with off-takers, financial institutions, investors, and other high-performing commercial actors. To achieve this goal, the program focuses on four interrelated components: improving the enabling environment for agricultural sector growth, broadening access to finance, promoting and facilitating investment opportunities, and sustainably enhancing the performance of agribusiness MSMEs. The program's geographic coverage includes seven focal states in Nigeria: Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Niger. The program's value chain coverage includes aquaculture, cowpea, maize, rice, and soybean. The program's approach is unique, as it focuses on working directly with established private sector agribusinesses (Lead Firms) to support their growth and expansion. The program has made significant progress in its first year, with a total of 15 large agribusinesses and over 10 financial and investment institutions collaborating with the CNFA team. The program has also established partnerships with suppliers, aggregators, financiers, investors, and service providers. The program's efforts have resulted in the development of a comprehensive business plan for the rice value chain, which includes a detailed analysis of the market, production costs, and potential returns. The program's implementation is divided into four components, each with its own set of objectives and activities. Component 1 aims to improve the enabling environment for agricultural sector growth, while Component 2 focuses on broadening access to finance. Component 3 promotes and facilitates investment opportunities, and Component 4 sustainably enhances the performance of agribusiness MSMEs. The program's cross-cutting themes include promoting and facilitating greater engagement of women and youth, journey to self-reliance, environmental compliance, youth development, policy and governance support, local capacity development, public-private partnerships, conflict mitigation, science, technology, and innovation impacts, and communications. The program's management and administration are overseen by a team of experienced professionals, who are responsible for ensuring the program's effective implementation and monitoring. The program's progress is monitored and evaluated through a range of indicators, including the number of agribusinesses supported, the amount of finance and investment mobilized, and the impact on the livelihoods of farmers and other stakeholders. The program's lessons learned and challenges are also documented and used to inform future program development and implementation. The program's planned activities for the next quarter include the continuation of the business plan development for the rice value chain, the establishment of partnerships with additional agribusinesses and financial institutions, and the implementation of a range of activities aimed at promoting and facilitating investment opportunities. The program's overall goal is to increase the competitiveness and returns of both large- and small-scale agricultural enterprises, and to facilitate $300m in new finance and investment across the five crops in the seven designated focal states.