By Emmanuel Nwazue, Umuahia
Umuahia, the capital city of Abia State has played host to the crème de la crème in the agricultural sector as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) launched its South-East Regional Consultation.
The programme tagged: ‘Country Strategic Opportunities Programmeʼ (COSOP) 2024-2029,’ was to promote agriculture and food systems transformation at the states and regional levels and had participants drawn from four states of Akwa Ibom, Imo, Rivers with Abia as the host. These states produced the various stakeholders in attendance from different value chains in agricultural development in region.
LIFE-ND, IFADʼs subsidiary which stands for Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprises for Niger Delta, and serves as the Abia State Project Coordinating Office for the international organisation, facilitated the workshop.
‘COSOP is a framework for making strategic choices about IFAD operations in a country, identifying opportunities for IFAD financing as well as facilitating management for results.’
Dr. Uchenna Onyeizu, the Abia LIFE-ND Project Co-ordinator, said in a remark.
He maintained that the COSOP was a roadmap for the implementation of IFAD’s mandate for inclusive and sustainable rural transformation—just as he urged the participants to ensure that their deliberations produced the needed policy documents to achieve the aim of the workshop.
Onyeizu further said that IFAD had earlier launched the COSOP in Abuja, and had decided to replicate the action via zonal consultations in the six geopolitical zones of Nigeria—with the Abia gathering as the prelude to the so zonal process of developing a new COSOP that would begin from 2024 to 2029—seeing that the present COSOP in the country would be expiring in December 2023.
On her part, Dr Chinwe Onyegbula, the Liaison Officer with the IFAD Country Programme Advisory Team for LIFE-ND project, reechoed the earlier point made by Dr Onyeizu, she said that the launch was a preparation in the design for another COSOP that would run for 2024-2029; and that the COSOP document reviews the specific rural poverty situation in order to determine geographic sites and thematic areas for IFAD operations.
According to Onyegbule the event was being conducted in the six geopolitical zones simultaneously, with all the stakeholders involved expected to make valuable inputs.
