Creating Possibilities In Nigeria’s Agric Environment — How Partnership With OCP Africa Helped Us.
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller.
Partnerships have always been at the heart of what we do at Thrive Agric. Partnerships for increased growth and value to our farmers is how we are steering our work to drive the next level of what winning in Agriculture in Africa would mean.
One of those partnerships is with OCP Africa, a leading global provider of Phosphate Fertilizers, who are helping smallholder farmers access fertilizer to improve crop yield and facilitating other value additions in extension services and access to finance.
Our partnership with OCP Africa has helped us capture increased yield for our farmers and greatly contributed to sustainable food production. Through this partnership, we have been able to connect our over 35,000 Smallholder Farmers with the tailored Agric booster initiative.
This has also been substantial in building an ecosystem of services that is intentional about innovating around the challenges of farmers in our improved bid to make agriculture even more profitable for our farmers while tackling the ever-looming question of food security in Nigeria.
The initiative provided tablets for field mapping, bikes, and stipends for extension officers. It has also been instrumental to our growth in terms of farmers output, number of tonnes per hectare, the average yield from the total number of farmers, highest yield and loan recovery rates.
During our last project, 20,917 Hectares of land was cultivated for white maize, 8285 Hectares for rice and 3442 Hectares for soybeans.
We know that with partnerships like this, we can empower more farmers across Nigeria and ultimately Africa. The possibilities are endless in the Agriculture industry, the projection is that Agriculture in Africa will be a $1 Trillion industry in 2050.
The current reality is that the industry is built on the backs of smallholder farmers and they are the key to unlocking Africas Agriculture potential.
The fact that Agriculture should not be seen as a lifestyle but a business that can generate massive wealth cannot be overemphasized. This means we must look for ways to make Agriculture more profitable for farmers and put some profit in their pockets and that is what we are about.
The only way to do that is to provide them with finance, inputs, data-guided advisory and a great market structure like we've been doing for the past 3 years. This way, we are making Agriculture profitable for them and also taking steps towards our vision to make Africa the food basket of the world.
PUTTING THE FARMER FIRST — HOW OUR PARTNERSHIP WITH OCP IS WORKING
This farmer-centric approach as we have always done has had tremendous effects with strategic partnerships of this scale.
This resulted in a 3.4MT average yield across all affected farms. 60% of our farmers recorded a higher yield, accounting for an overwhelming 18% increase from our production volumes 2018.
Our highest recording farm had a yield of 7.8MT. We had a loan recovery rate of 97% as well. Creating better lives for farmers and telling the stories of how we are transforming their lives, one-Farmer-at-a-time is what makes this journey adventurous for us.
One of our farmers Rabiu Aliyu, a Maize farmer who recorded a 3.1 MT in his last harvest doubled that with a whopping 6.5 MT, over 100% increment. Another Maize farmer, Deji Sani was able to improve her output from 2.5 MT to 3.2 MT, a 30% growth over the previous year.
Partnerships with well-meaning brands like OCP Africa, that is committed to the growth of sustainable agriculture on the continent is how we are choosing to approach the scale and urgency that food production demands.
RAISING THE BAR — OPENING MORE VENTS FOR SUSTAINABLE PARTNERSHIPS
As a company, we are strongly focused on value delivery Thrive Agric prides itself as an ecosystem creator within the Nigerian Agric sector. Having done this for a number of years, we know the value great partnerships bring to the table and are glad to be working with OCP Africa to help meet the challenges smallholder farmers face in the Nigeria environment — from access to fertilizer and farm inputs at the right cost, to access to finance to purchase the right kind of input to raise crop yield to access to the market for their produce. Solving this challenge is at the heart of Nigeria’s Agric revolution.
Food security and the growth of non-oil export continue to be critical issues in Nigeria. The major policy thrust of the Economic Reform Programme of the Nigerian government is the diversification of the economy away from Crude Oil.
Since the Agriculture sector offers the best prospect for meeting government’s target, the clear advantage of the partnership with OCP Africa is that it helps us scale up so we can serve as a critical agent in the fulfilment of the aspirations of the Nigerian government.
Beyond raising crop yield through the supply of affordable fertilizers and other farm inputs, OCP Africa continues to support us with extension services which points the ideal direction in terms of fertilizer use based on topography and nature of the soil existent across our partner farms.
OCP Africa is also helping in the area of access to finance, through partnerships with credit providers at an affordable cost to smallholder farmers.
These contributions by OCP Africa has seen us at Thrive Agric focus on creating value within our ecosystem of smallholder farmers while OCP Africa provides the facilitation platform which enables us to do our work. The partnership is therefore one which we hope we can grow, consolidate, and sustain through the years.
A prosperous Africa begins with you, let’s do more for our Farmers. Visit thriveagric.com to get started. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and subscribe to our YouTube Channel to see our work improving the lives of local farmers in Nigeria and how we are building to ensure food security in Africa, one farmer at a time.
