Nigeria, Vietnam partner on food security

By Providence Obuh

Businessmen from Nigerian and Vietnam have entered into a strategic partnership to help ensure food security in Nigeria, with the establishment of agricultural processing zones in a number of farm settlements across the country.

President of the Nigerian-Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Mr Oye Akinsemoyin who made this known during the chamber’s quarterly breakfast meeting in Lagos, added that the project will present numerous opportunities for undergraduate youths, who are expected to tap into the benefits presented by the farm’s agro processing plant.

Oye said “We have the farm settlement or what you can call the food insecurity and youth unemployment pogramme nicknamed the farm settlement, in which the chamber is in the process of promoting and setting up of farm settlement in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria so that within the farm settlement we can set up agro processing plants that would then begin to ease the difficulty being experienced in food security by our country, and also youth unemployment”.

Lamenting the high number of unemployed youths, he explained that there are lots of graduates who are in the job market looking for jobs, pointing out that some of them can be engaged in the agro processing farm settlements.

According to him, “some products from the farm settlements will be encouraged to enter into the export market for the benefit of the people of Nigeria”.

However, he noted that though the chamber has been in existence as an informal group since 2006, it came into existence in the year 2007 as a body of people who are interested in trade and commerce after it was registered by the corporate Affairs Commission in 2007.

In the same vein, President Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry Otunba Femi Deru said that the private sector would have to play a major role for the economy to make progress, noting that the public sector would also have to create the enabling environment.