Several Oyo State Youth Entrepreneurship in Agribusiness Project (YEAP) participants have praised Engr. In order to ensure their sustainability in the agribusiness value chain they have chosen as a career, Seyi Makinde’s administration in the State provided mentorship, timely training, and other services.

After the round table meeting with the Canadian Deputy High Commissioner at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) in Ibadan, a few chosen YEAP beneficiaries who are now agribusiness entrepreneurs spoke with journalists and praised the state government for a series of agribusiness exposures and training.

A young entrepreneur who specializes in agribusiness finished products like indigenous herbal tea, cold-pressed peanut cooking/vegetable oil, peanut flour, and others, Miss Tubi Ibukunoluwa, one of the YEAP beneficiaries who was trained by the Oyo state government in Nasarawa state and who is now the founder of Ibasket.ng, insisted that the training has been an eye opener for her agribusiness production career.

The purpose of the round table meeting, according to its facilitator, Dr. Debo Akande, Executive Adviser to Governor Makinde on Agribusiness and Director General of Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency (OYSADA), is to bring together local, small, medium, and large agribusiness manufacturers to discuss their needs with the Canadian government, which is in town to promote domestic production and trade between countries.

Dr. Akande said, “We hosted the Deputy High Commission of Canada to Nigeria as part of our continuous relationship with international development countries.”

“Oyo state is known now to be attractive to quite a number of international countries and businesses and one of the best ways to do it is when you are relating with the government of the country itself, as you’re aware we already had a close relationship with the French government and that has brought in quite numbers of businesses within the state and development funds to the state, the fund we are using for our RAMP today is from the French development bank, the fund that we have used for some of our health projects is from the French development bank, similar things applied to the Netherlands now that we have built a relationship with them, you can see what Frieslandcampina is doing in one of our hubs at Fasola Farm. Beyond that as well, there has been the Oyo Netherlands business round table that we had, and now we have the British Deputy High Commissioner coming just a couple of weeks ago and the Consular General of the US and now we are having the Canadian government, this shows that there is something we are doing rightly in Oyo state that is attracting all these foreign countries to our dear state, and they not just coming for coming sake, when they come like that is a pointer to the fact that something in terms of partnership and collaboration is coming to the state.”

“So precisely, this Canadian visit is meant to support Oyo state in developing our trade around agribusiness, because we have been doing quite a lots in the state as regards agribusiness but again market matters for the Canadian government, they will want to see the collaborative relationship on how the Canadian government could benefits and Oyo state government could benefits in this as well, they are already telling us that they have been working with numbers of our private companies within the state, today we have a round table session with some selected private sectors within the state, the round table session is with the Deputy High Commissioner, who’s also the commissioner of trade of the Canadian government to Nigeria to see how best how these companies can benefits from the Canadian government in terms of what they need to do in packaging their products for export, to also see what they need to do in terms of diverse trade benefits that exist within the Canadian government and that is what we have been able to do here today.”

“We have the mix of younger and older Agribusiness entrepreneurs here, we have here today some of the people that were trained by Oyo state government at Nasarawa state, for instance, Tubi Ibukunoluwa and Daniel and others are here, Tubi and others already have products and brands of their own, they are producing unique products such as tea, peanut oil, groundnut flour, well-packed Mushroom among others we want to showcase them, to ensure that they have the necessary exposures because exposure is one of the things that is very necessary for business because when you expose them and allow them to mingle with people that are ahead of them, people that have done similar things, then this will expose their businesses and their products to both the local and international communities.”

“Beyond that, you know that Oyo state thrives in the area of youths and agribusiness and we want to expose these young entrepreneurs as much as we can do, nevertheless we also have here the bigger players like Niji Groups, the Sugarcane Company, Coconut Jam, Psaltry, who are big players, we want them to mix and see the reality of what our ecosystem is in the area of agriculture and that is why we have the younger ones and the older ones and both the medium, the large and small scale companies all together here at this round table meeting with the Canadian Deputy High Commissioner.”
“What we have experience is that such meeting like this always comes with great positive advantages to our state, you can see when we have the French government, you can see what that has brought to the state in terms of benefits, the Netherlands government as well, you can see what it has brought to us, already we had a commitment from the Canadian government now that there will be trade mission between the state and the Canadian and beyond that they had already committed to work with all these companies that are here today to provide resources for them in terms of understanding what is required for certification products to be able to export to Canada, we can’t get it better than that at a particular state, to be able to see how we can drive investors from this angle to Oyo state, earlier the Deputy High Commissioner met with Oyo State governor and the Excellency has gave them the assurances that we will ensure we continue to provide the enabling environment for private sectors to thrive and we will continue to put in the right kind of policy and facilitate a smooth relationship between actors and stakeholders within the agribusiness spaces and that is what we are doing here today,” Debo said.
Another YEAP beneficiary, Daniel, who is into mushroom production, praised the State government for its training programs and other initiatives in his remarks. He claimed that these initiatives had given him a significant advantage over other young entrepreneurs in his line of work.
In his word, “I am the team lead for Famamata Agritech, what we do is to turn waste into wealth, and our product, for now, is a well-packaged mushroom, this is what you can do within a small space in your living room and that’s what we call city farming, the YEAP training at Nasarawa has made this very easier for me, the program was a good and laudable one for many of us, because it has really opened our eyes to many things in Agribusiness and that’s what we are still leveraging upon till today, it is a very good exposure.”
“In most cases, we the youths don’t really need money, we need exposure because with my own exposure at Nasarawa I have been able to see a lot of things and have been able to learn the value chain in Agriculture and I know that something is very important for me to do because I have been able to see series of things and value chain in Agribusiness and different commodity of choices and from there I was able to see different innovations about Agriculture and for someone like me that has a passion for Agriculture I know I have to start developing something and that is why I came up with this well-packaged mushroom and the market acceptability has been great since I started,” Daniel said.

Follow us here  for more news in Oyo State.

Oyo Truth is an independent online news platform/medium reporting up-to-date events, happenings and activities related to Oyo State, Nigeria.