About 65,000 Nigerian farmers are to access tractors, seeds, fertilizer and finance from a $20.4 million grant from the Mastercard Foundation, according to Reuters.
The grant is aimed at helping agriculture recover from the COVID-19 pandemic in a way that will help it to withstand future crises such as climate change.
Under the arrangement, in which the Foundation teamed up with Alluvial Agriculture, a farming collective, some 200 tractors, 330,000 kilograms of seeds, climate advisories and digital payment systems will enable farmers to help feed the nation of nearly 200 million people.
“We are bringing farmers together in what we call community blocks so they can support each other… and to attract a large pool of finance so they can continue to expand,” Alluvial founder Dimieari Von Kemedi said.
The average Nigerian farm has 1.8 hectares, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, but the project will group them into 500-hectare collectives to create economies of scale.
Despite years of government attention and millions of dollars in targeted Central Bank loans, Nigeria’s farms have low yields and less than 1% of farmland is irrigated.
Many work the fields by hand and cannot access fertilizer or high-quality seeds.
The grant is expected to keep the farmers afloat after the lockdowns cut their access to both farmlands and markets earlier this year.