As meals costs soar and extra Nigerian households wrestle to afford fundamental meals, a renewed name for resilience within the nation’s meals system is gaining momentum.
Sahel Consulting Agriculture and Diet Restricted is convening stakeholders throughout authorities, personal sector, civil society, and media for the ‘Sahel Meals Techniques Changemakers Convention 2025’, aimed toward rethinking how agricultural programmes are designed and sustained.
Themed ‘Designing for Legacy: Constructing Resilient and Affect-Pushed Meals Techniques,’ the convention comes amid rising issues over Nigeria’s dependence on short-term donor-driven tasks that always collapse when funding ends.
“After we discuss legacy, we’re speaking about resilience — programmes that final past a donor’s funding window and proceed to ship affect for farmers, households, and communities,” mentioned Temitope Adegoroye, managing accomplice at Sahel Consulting.
She defined that billions of {dollars} have gone into Nigeria’s agricultural growth within the final decade, however persistent structural challenges — from low productiveness to poor coordination — proceed to undermine progress.
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“Too usually, tasks thrive whereas funding is flowing, however as soon as it stops, the whole lot involves a halt. We want new fashions embedded in native methods, owned by communities, and strengthened by personal sector management,” she mentioned.
The decision for reform comes at a time of shifting world growth priorities. With main worldwide funders scaling again in 2025, many organisations that after formed Africa’s meals safety panorama are struggling to stay viable.
For Nigeria, this presents each a disaster and a chance — an opportunity to chart a path towards homegrown resilience.
“Funders, governments, and communities all agree that we can not hold doing the identical issues and count on completely different outcomes,” Adegoroye famous.
“We should design for legacy — initiatives that outlive donor cycles, empower native actors, and construct resilience into the meals system from the beginning,” she added.
The upcoming convention, scheduled for October 30, 2025, will deliver collectively policymakers, personal buyers, researchers, and grassroots leaders to debate revolutionary coverage and funding methods.
Contributors will mirror on classes from previous interventions, share profitable fashions, and discover methods to scale back Nigeria’s dependence on exterior support.
One of many convention’s priorities is to stress accountable public spending in agricultural programmes. Adegoroye careworn that tasks should transfer away from patronage-driven fashions.
“We can not see tasks as alternatives to fill pockets. They need to drive actual, lasting affect, owned by the individuals who stay with the outcomes,” she famous.
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Specialists say Nigeria’s meals system stays susceptible as a result of many agricultural interventions fail to take root regionally. Programmes are sometimes externally designed and donor-dependent, with restricted native possession. This has made sustainability a recurring problem even in profitable tasks.
By bringing collectively a various vary of voices — from policymakers and personal buyers to farmers, neighborhood leaders, and journalists — the group hopes to foster cross-sector collaboration that may drive lasting change.
“This isn’t the same old convention,” Adegoroye mentioned. “It’s a likelihood to unlearn, relearn, and design initiatives that actually serve our individuals and our future. If we succeed, generations to come back will inherit meals methods which can be stronger, fairer, and extra resilient.”
Sahel Consulting, an African advisory agency working with governments, personal sector actors, and growth companions, says the last word objective is to translate dialogue into tangible actions that strengthen meals safety, promote worth addition, and guarantee sustainable livelihoods for farmers.
