Abuja, Dec. 14, 2024 – The federal government has said it was collaborating with the World Bank to scale up the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP) in Nigeria.
Aliyu Abdullah, the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, disclosed this in Abuja on Friday at a news conference.
He said the RAAMP project was an on-going project and had been implemented across 19 states of the federation.
The minister said out of the 19 states, 16 had already passed laws establishing their state’s rural access rule authority alongside the state rule fund.
“This is a very strong collaboration with the World Bank, almost all the states of the federation are asking for on-boarding. This will also afford them the opportunity to benefit from the massive success this project is delivering.
“While it is agreed that we are going to scale up RAMP, we must include sustainability elements,” he said.
Abdullahi, who underscored the importance of the rural access and agricultural marketing project, said most of the movements in rural areas were due to agricultural marketing.
“We realised that agricultural marketing is an important component. In fact, most of the movement in rural areas is due to agricultural marketing.
“Most of our population live in the rural areas, so that underscores the importance of the rural access and agricultural marketing project,” he said.
He said the Ministry was working to promote the role of rural roads in delivering its mandate of ensuring food security.
According to the minister, this project is intended to institutionalise the idea of developing rural areas in Nigeria.
Abdullahi said if this is done it would create new development domains, while also developing agricultural clusters that would support economic diversification drive.
In a remark, the National Coordinator, RAAMP, Mr. Aminu Mohammed, said the objective of the project was the improvement of rural routes as well as supporting improvement of agricultural marketing.
He said the RAAMP project was in tandem with President Bola Tinubu’s quest to attain food security in the country.
