Professor Charles Anosike, the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), has said that insurance coverage for Nigerian farmers would strengthen the country\u2019s food security.<\/p>\n
This call was made by Anosike when a delegation from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid a courtesy visit to his office in Abuja.<\/p>\n
He appreciated the delegation for recognising the role that NiMet is playing in the agricultural value-chain and other sectors, and for seeking the agency\u2019s partnership in organising the forthcoming Agricultural Insurance and Weather Advisory Services Roundtable.
\nThe USAID team were urged by the NiMET DG\/CEO\u00a0to also extend an invitation to the financial sector.<\/p>\n
According to him, \u201cNiMet does a lot of work in early warnings. When we talk about insurance or early warnings, it is not just about the productivity of farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s also about saving lives. Lives have already been lost in the 2024 flood. Let\u2019s keep in mind that early warnings savelives.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen financial institutions talk about risk management, they focus on shareholder value.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anosike said, \u201cif we\u2019re able to get the financial sector in the room for them to begin to integrate climate risk into their operations and risk management, we will be able to convince them. This can help us to achieve the agricultural insurance scheme for farmers.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you look at the economy, whatever problem we are having now, climate change compounds it. It is a threat multiplier. This compels NiMet to do things differently. We will participate in all aspects of the roundtable to ensure success and achievements of the set objectives.\u201d
\nHe encouraged the USAID team to consider rolling out a pilot scheme of insurance for the farmers before bringing it to the public sector, assuring that NiMet would also invite its stakeholders to be part of it.<\/p>\n
However, Anosike, informed the delegation that NiMet would be rolling out suites of training on weather, water, and climate science to build capacity across its stakeholders and foster a shared vision.<\/p>\n
Dr. Ben Odoemena, Chief of Party, Extension Activity of United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and leader of the delegation, speaking during the courtesy visit, thanked Anosike for granting the team audience.
\nOdoemena said: \u201cOur mission is to seek collaboration with NiMet, and the agency\u2019s participation in the roundtable.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe essence of the workshop is to bring the theme to the fore of key stakeholders, in the agricultural sector, insurance sector, financial sector, etc.<\/p>\n
\u201cClimate change is here. If you are doing business and you don\u2019t know whether it\u2019s going to rain today or rain tomorrow, then you are not in business. Not only in agriculture, it cuts across every aspect of life.
\n\u201cThe role of NiMet is quite strategic in achieving this objective and the proposed stakeholders\u2019 roundtable will strongly complement NiMet\u2019s services.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe cannot achieve the objective without working with NiMet. Farmers are not insuring their farms and their businesses.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it is in this context that we said, that as much as there is poor or no penetration of insurance in the rural settings, there is also limited penetration of weather information at the rural level to the smallholder farmer and the micro farmer.
\n\u201cWe know that NiMet is doing a lot of work, and very wonderful things in the field but we need to scale the process.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to see a situation where a smallholder farmer will say that he or she wants to know what the weather will be tomorrow before going to the farm.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat consciousness has to be instilled in the smallholder farmer. That is the only way we can know that we are on track in agriculture.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Professor Charles Anosike, the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), has said that insurance coverage for Nigerian farmers would strengthen the country\u2019s food security. This call was made by Anosike when a delegation from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) paid a courtesy visit to his office […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":47208,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[59,372],"class_list":["post-47201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-featured","tag-nimet"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47209,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47201\/revisions\/47209"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/47208"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}