This taskforce is established against a backdrop of the urgent need to accelerate implementation of Nigeria’s economic blue-print – the vision 2020 – while meeting the country’s objectives under the Paris Climate Change Agreement as enshrined in its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). These are shared government-wide priorities to which each ministry’s work & policies cascades upwards to actualize. The task force launch meeting provided an opportunity to share with high level policy makers across government ministries, on 3 critical aspects towards actualizing accelerated implementation;

First, convening complementary strengths across different ministries around the strategic thrust of climate proofing & maximizing productivity of Agriculture. A highly catalytic sector capable of accelerating actualization of shared priorities of the vision 2020 & NDCs;

Second, the efficacy of building on on-going work in each of these complementary sectors to minimize duplication which is the biggest operational risk.

Third, leveraging on human capital – the professional skills & networks represented in each of the complementary sectors to bridge gaps in the above – rather that upfront financing.

The taskforce strategic aims & operation: the overarching goal is to bridge policy silos for policy coherence towards creating market enablers for implementation of Nigeria’s Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) in the context of actualizing Nigeria long-term development blue-print - the vision 2020 – both being shared government-wide priorities. The motivation of the task-force is enhancing the cumulative throughput of sectorial policies towards the above shared priorities by enhancing inter-ministerial policy coherence & synergy towards setting an enabling economy wide policy environment that attracts investments towards a catalytic drive area. Which is establishment of Ecosystems Based Adaptation (EBA)-Driven Agriculture led, clean energy powered industrialization with ICT enabled linkages to market and supply chains as the strategic thrust engine of maximizing both climate & socioeconomic benefits for Nigeria. By this, incentivize Nigeria’s transition to Low Emissions Development. The approach used;

a)     Builds on existing, planned, ongoing policies & processes within each of the respective complementary ministries rather than starting from scratch. This to lower operational risks and enhance efficiency;

b)   Ensures the realignments in implementing respective ministry policies to create synergy in the above, also drives actualization of each ministries sectorial priorities. This ensures buy-in of the taskforce by all relevant sectorial policy players.  

 Key achievements

The task force has prioritized building on flagship policy processes ongoing in Nigeria. Specifically, the 40% cassava-wheat bread policy, the Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing Facility for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) policy, the Nigeria Feed-in Tariffs policy, the Nigeria Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) – specifically priorities on scaling climate smart agriculture (CSA) & clean energy; the Nigeria Transport Policy on rural connectivity; the Nigeria ICT policy; the Cooperatives Development policy and the policy objectives of the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) to ensure quality of Nigeria produce for enhanced domestic & export market competitiveness. To this end, the task force mobilized policy focal points from ministries representative of agriculture at the core to be complemented by environment (to infuse climate resilience), infrastructure and ICT (for efficient market & supply chain linkages), energy (to power processing & drive agro-manufacturing for wealth creation), representation from the standardization body (expanded markets), finance and cooperatives development (enhance affordable sustainable financing), and planning (integration into long term strategic plans), coherently working towards establishing the economy wide enabling policy environment. 

Next steps: leverage on the momentum created by the launch meeting to drive progress in convening complementarities for governmentwide synergy in implementing shared priorities – the vision 2020 & NDCs.

The Nigeria EBAFOSA Inter Agency Policy Task Force to focus on the effective & efficient delivery through government wide policy synergy, of shared priorities under the vision 2020 and NDCs through sustainably industrializing its agro-value chains as the strategic thrust engine. This to be realized by combining clean energy development with sustainable agriculture developments as the core of sustainable industry with key enablers in markets, standards & financing.  Starting off with the cassava value chain as a catalytic crop for which Nigeria is the largest producer globally. To this end, the following are the key next steps;

1) Domestication of the EBAFOSA compliance standards for enforcement by the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) to establish market pull factors for the above paradigm.

2) NIRSAL to be expanded to provide incentivizes for farmer cooperatives to prioritize market financing at community level of the above continuum;

3) Maximizing the cassava bread policy by solving current bottlenecks confronting it. Especially, quality control issues by leveraging on the EBAFOSA compliance standard; adequacy of feedstock by leveraging on clean energy to power value addition and cut postharvest losses, on efficient linkages to markets through ICT & adequate source-to-markets connectivity infrastructure, and on EBA & sustainable approaches in production to adapt to yield losses driven by climate change impacts.

4) Maximizing the Nigeria Feed-in Tariff policy to drive strategic thrust by ensuring incentives to scale decentralized clean energy are tied to powering agro-value addition.

5) Task force to analyse additional policies in each of the line ministries for additional policy elements that are complementary & synergistic to contribute to drive productivity maximization of the engine of development (agriculture) through sustainably industrializing it as discussed above.

Congratulations to the Government of Nigeria for taking its collaboration with UN Environment EBAFOSA further to accelerate climate resilient socioeconomic transformation to the benefit of people & planet!

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