A multi-million Naira Youth
Farming Initiative that will engage teeming unemployed Nigerian graduates in
rice farming has been launched by the Dangote Rice Limited (www.Dangote.com) in
Kogi State.
This is even as the Company
prepares to hit the market with One million metric tons of Dangote rice in
2018.
The Dangote Youth Rice Farm
project, mainly an out-grower scheme for youths only was flagged off at the
Lower Niger River Basin Authority, Kampe, Ejiba in Yagba West local government
area of the state where youth have embarked on rice cultivation over 100
hectares of land.
The rice farm project, which was
preceded by a special training for the youth farmers on the dynamics of the
rice farming, will see the youths cultivating the rice paddy on a 100 hectares
of land, which will then be bought over by the company for processing.
Under the scheme, the Dangote
Rice Company provides the seedling, anti-pest-chemicals, and fertilizers while
the Basing Authority provided the land for the young farmers.
The management of Dangote Rice
led by the Group Executive Director, Mr. Devakumar Edwin flagged off the
project while taking delivery of some rice paddy bags produced from the pilot project.
Mr. Edwin explained that the
project is a new dimension to the efforts by the pan-African conglomerate, the
Dangote Group, at ensuring food security and creating job opportunities in
Nigeria especially for the youths saying this Initiative is in line with the
vision and commitment of Dangote Industries Limited to create a new generation
of agri-preneur that will revolutionize the Nigerian agricultural sector.
“We believe skill, knowledge,
enabling environment, collaboration and linkages along the value chain are
driving forces for economic empowerment and social development in line with the
Federal Government policies. This project will address the skills gap in local
rice production among unemployed youths by providing technical, organisational
and financial requirements.”
He said it would also enhance
domestic rice production to cover the large gap between demand and domestic
production and to increase self-sufficiency of Nigeria and substitute imported
rice by quality Nigerian rice brands.
Mr. Edwin disclosed that most
modern rice mills in Nigeria presently operate at not more than 20% capacity
utilization due mainly to lack of good quality paddy and that Dangote Rice
aimed to change this situation developing and adapting out-grower schemes. According
to him, the Dangote Rice Company plans to set up a 150,000 metric tons
integrated rice mill and sale one million mt of parboiled rice by 2018.
The Dangote Group boss stated
that the decision of the management to start the project was driven by two factors,
one of which is the need for youth employment through empowerment to go into
agriculture. “The youths are more vulnerable to crimes and other social vices
when they have nothing to engage them and this in turn affect the nation
negatively.
“The second factor is the need to
strengthen the on-going efforts at producing rice for self-sufficiency so that
we can save foreign exchange. By the time we will be doing one million metric
tons of rice next year, no less than three million jobs would been created
along the value chain.”
Mr. Edwin said the Kogi pilot
project will cover four season of two years and will be launched in four other
states soon.
In his own remark, the Managing
Director of Dangote Rice, Mr. Robert Coleman urged the youth farmers to
concentrate on the project and pay attention to details so that they would come
out with good paddy yield.
He congratulated the farmers for
the decision to partner with Dangote Rice noting that they have a solid source
of livelihood for themselves and members of their families if they give their
all for the success of the scheme.
The Coordinator of the youth
farmers, Umar Etudaye thanked the management of Dangote Rice for believing in
them and engaging them for the project. He promised that they would deliver on
the mandate given to them on the project.
He stated that the scheme is a
practical step towards nation building because it’s the youths, who constitute
40 per cent of the population, would build the nation and only the youths that
are empowered and gainfully employed could do that.
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