The Presidency has dispatched a high-level delegation to Morocco to formalise a partnership to develop Nigeria’s first National Agro-Productivity System.
The delegation, led by the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (in the Office of the Vice President), Sen. Ibrahim Hadejia, left on Wednesday.
Hadejia was to represent the Chairperson of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit, Vice President Kashim Shettima.
Technical Assistant on Agriculture to the President (Office of the VP), Marion Moon, disclosed this in a statement she signed Wednesday titled ‘Federal Government Launches Strategic Partnership to Strengthen Nigeria’s National Agricultural
Intelligence Capability.’
Moon, who is also the Executive Secretary of the PFSCU, revealed that the shared geospatial intelligence platform would give federal, state and local governments real-time data on crop location, land availability, yield projections and food security threats nationwide.
According to Moon, Hadejia would sign the Memorandum of Understanding between the PFSCU, OCP Africa and Ground Truth Analytics on Friday.
The PFSCU scribe also noted that the initiative marked a shift in how the country approached agricultural planning.
She said, “The future of agriculture depends not only on improved inputs, but equally on stronger intelligence.
“Through this partnership, Nigeria is strengthening the institutional capabilities needed to plan better, respond faster, and make more informed decisions.
“It also reflects the Federal Government’s commitment to stronger coordination, recognising that sustainable development is accelerated when institutions work together around shared national priorities.”
The National Agro-Productivity System would be coordinated by the PFSCU under the National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism approved by the National Council on Agriculture and Food Security, she added.
The initiative, Moon explained, “will provide Government with timely insights on agricultural land availability, crop location, crop performance, growth stages and expected yield outcomes, strengthening production planning, food security monitoring, agribusiness
investment, early warning, and policy development.”
Phase One of the initiative would comprise a six-month pilot across three states, focusing on localisation of the technology through dataset calibration, ground-truthing and national capacity building.
The pilot would establish the technical and institutional foundations needed before the system is rolled out nationwide, Moon added.
The Nigeria-Morocco partnership came exactly three years after President Bola Tinubu on July 13, 2023, declared a state of emergency on food security.
Nigeria’s food security crisis deepened in 2023, when the removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the naira exchange window triggered a severe food inflation spiral that pushed the cost of staples beyond the reach of millions of households.
At its peak in early 2025, Nigeria’s food inflation exceeded 40 per cent year-on-year, among the highest in the world, with rice, maize, tomatoes and cooking oil recording the sharpest increases.
The World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and UNICEF had all raised the alarm about the scale of food insecurity in the country, with UNICEF estimating that over 31.8 million children under five are acutely malnourished.
According to the UNICEF, it was the second highest burden in the world after India.
The crisis was further compounded by persistent insecurity in the North-West and North-Central farming belts, flooding and climate disruptions in the Middle Belt.
This also included structural weaknesses in the country’s agricultural data infrastructure that made it difficult for planners to accurately monitor production, anticipate shortfalls or target interventions.
