A State Executive Committee is created, consisting of representatives of the partnering organizations (NDE/ITF/Mentors), a community grassroot mobilizer, a business administrator, and an IT specialist.
Sustainable Agricultural Development Training Skills (SADTS)
The Rural Employment Promotion is one of the core programme departments of the National Directorate of Employment with designing schemes to combat mass unemployment in the area of agriculture and its value chain putting into consideration the declining interest of youth in the agricultural sector.
Objectives
- Generating rural employment and improving incomes through agribusiness engagements,
- Promoting the adoption of improved technologies in post-harvest handling, storage and processing and
- Promoting other non-farm rural employment activities in order to stem the rural-urban drift.
Strategies
The REP Programme uses training to stimulate the interest of all categories of the unemployed persons (School leavers, Graduates of tertiary institutions, Retirees, People with special needs etc.) in the rural areas to identify business opportunities in the agricultural value chain for employment and wealth creation. It builds the capacity of participants for the successful management of different demand-driven viable agri-businesses.
Sustainable Agricultural Development Training Scheme (SADTS)
This is a paradigm shift from the usual Rural Agricultural Training Scheme (RADTS) training which makes the agricultural production activities to be more sustainable. The target group includes Graduate of higher institutions, School leavers and Retirees.
In 2017, the scheme was piloted in 19 States namely; FCT, Anambra, Abia, Bauchi, Cross-river, Delta, Ebonyi, Gombe, Jigawa, Katsina, Niger, Ondo, Plateau, Taraba, Ekiti, Oyo, Osun, Bayelsa, Kaduna and Kebbi State. Fifty participants were recruited in each State and the FCT giving a total of 950 participants.
The success of the SADTS implementation led to the management approval for the scheme to be replicated in any part of the world. Fifty (50) participants could be recruited per State thus having 1,850 participants in all. The scheme involved theoretical two weeks of training and 3 months of experiential adaptive practical training.
SADTS : Adamawa State
Community sensitization and mobilization is undertaken (per LGA) to inform the community of the project, determine the core 20 trainers/industrialists per LGA.
Training of the trainees by a team of experts in:
- Leadership/Communication Skills;
- Basic Business Management Skills;
- Primary production skills (basically rice, poultry and fishery);
- Integration knowledge to convert waste to inputs.
- Industrial operations (particularly running a rice mill).
The training program will run for 3 months with each module running for two weeks on the average.
Step 1
Mobilization and organization of farmers (2,000 primary producers per Local Government Area, by the 420 trainees/industrialists.
This will serve as practical activity for the Leadership and Communication skills module, while business plan and presentation for their industrial activity will serve as practical for the basic business skill module.
Industrial attachment will serve for the remaining modules. However, the experts will continue to mentor them while they are setting up and running their own businesses.
Step 2
The 20 trainees from each LGA will be mentored to access the AGSMEIS loan to run their businesses in the agricultural value-chain businesses Each of them will apply for the CBN AGSMEISIS loan of N10m to obtain the startup capital for their business.
Step 3
The integration of their 42,000 (2000 in each LGA) Anchor Borrower farmers to cultivate a hectare of rice each.