Ibadan, May 2, 2025 – The International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, Oyo state, has supported 70 young farmers in the state who were trained in Agriculture.
They were trained under Youth-in-Agribusiness (YAS), a model designed to combat widespread youth unemployment and foster self-employment in agriculture.
The young farmers, who came from various local government areas of Oyo state, were presented with multimillion naira worth of inputs and farming equipment.
The equipment included solar irrigation system, rotary slashers, defeathering machine, stems of improved cassava varieties, fertilizers, Gaari fryers, water tanks, vegetable seeds, fish and poultry feed, seedling trays, coco peat, packs of improved maize varieties, generator, irrigation drips, knapsack sprayers and Gaari pressers.
Prof Michael Abberton, the Head of the Genetic Resources Centre at IITA, said the input support would facilitate the expansion of their agribusiness ventures.
He commended them for their interest in agriculture and enjoined them to leverage the support network established for them by the project. H
Abberton, who represented the Senior Management Team, thanked the Kingdom of the Netherlands for supporting the project.
“Youth involvement in agribusiness has been the focus of the IITA Youth in Agribusiness Office over the last decade, so this initiative is very important to IITA.
“By virtue of the training and input support, your businesses will be able to scale-up, coupled with the people you are bringing into employment by virtue of your expansion and the businesses you are creating. So, congratulations for being part of this.
“With your cassava, fish, horticulture, poultry, cassava processing and other commodities, this is a good start. The support network has been created and I hope you will continue to leverage it to expand your businesses. We look forward to seeing your businesses expand.”
Ms Aline Mugisho, the Chief Executive Officer, IITA Youth Agripreneurs, called on the participants to embrace the coaching and mentorship programme for all past participants of the project.
She said: “This project is also being implemented in Abuja, Oyo and Ogun states, so we have a large pool of participants year after year that you can network with, and we have a top-notch coaching and mentorship program that will help you.
“We encourage you to stay in touch. Feel free to disturb us; that is our work. Agribusiness is big business and we are here to support you.”
Adebayo Awotodunbo, the representative of the IITA Head of Station, Abuja, promised that YAS would continue to sustain its relationship with its participants.
“We want the training to translate to enterprises and then to big businesses, which is why we supported you with items that are critical to your agro-businesses.
“We want you to scale up your businesses to be able to get better income and be employers of labor in your communities, and these inputs will help to make it happen. Above that, we want you to contribute to food security in Nigeria.
He warned the beneficiaries against selling the distributed farm inputs.
“These items are not meant for sale. I say this because we have seen cases in the past where people were supported, but instead of using the inputs for their businesses, they sold them. That does not make sense. Let’s always strive to do the right thing.”
“We thank the Kingdom of the Netherlands for sponsoring this project. As the monitoring and evaluation team visited all the businesses for evaluation, they will be back to assess your utilization of this input and recommend if we should provide you with more input. But if you have sold the items, you are out of the scheme,” he said.
