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To help Nigeria revitalize agriculture, the Chinese government has sent 393 experts in agriculture and related disciplines to provide assistance to farming communities across the West African country, a Nigerian official has said.
LAGOS, July 10 (Xinhuanet) -- To help Nigeria revitalize agriculture, the Chinese government has sent 393 experts in agriculture and related disciplines to provide assistance to farming communities across the West African country, a Nigerian official has said.
Salisu Ingawa, project coordinator of Nigeria's National Special Program for Food Security (NSPFS), told reporters at the weekend at a one-day seminar for sensitization of stakeholders on bamboo development and utilization that the partnership between Nigeria and China in the area of agriculture was in keeping with the south-south cooperation agreement between the two countries.
Within the frame work of the south-south cooperation between Nigeria and that of China under the National Special Program for Food Security (NSPFS), he said, "there are 393 Chinese experts andtechnicians in agriculture and related disciplines working directly with farmers in farming communities in 109 NSPFS sites Nationwide."
According to Ingawa, the seminar tagged "Poverty Alleviation Through Bamboo-based Development in Agriculture: China Experience"is necessitated by the need to borrow a leaf from China which earned as mush as 3.5 billion US dollars in foreign exchange from the bamboo-based sector in 2003.
Early this year, he said, Michael Idowu, an agro-forestry national facilitator, represented Nigeria to participate in an international workshop on poverty alleviation through bamboo-based development in China.
He added that the volume of experience gathered through Nigeria's participation has helped to stimulate the determination to explore Nigeria's vast bamboo reserve found mostly in the wild of southern and middle belt states of the country.
The NSPFS national project coordinator noted that Nigeria must reinvent its once enviable agricultural sector in a time when it is desirous of a viable alternative to oil revenue.
According to him, Nigeria is to set up a bamboo national database in order to effectively explore abundant bamboo resource which can boast of turning out about 300 byproducts. Enditem