The Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN), an NGO, has donated fully equipped agricultural centres for smallholder women farmers in two states, in celebration of the 2021 International Women’s Day.
Hajia Salamatu Garba, Founder/ Executive Director, who made this known in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), on Wednesday, in Abuja, stated that the centres are located in Dogon, Bauchi state, and Zaria in Kaduna state.
She disclosed that the centres were equipped with various farm machinery, such as power tillers, groundnut shelling machine, rice milling machine, and water pumps to aid their dry season irrigation activities.
She said WOFAN had also supported the women farmers with startup capital, in addition to 100 measures of shelled groundnut and 80 measures of paddy rice.
Similarly, the women farmers’ empowerment organization, said it provided the centres with rice de-stoners, groundnut oil extracting machines, two parboiling pots and two improved stoves.
Garba, said the building and donation of the multi-million Naira centre “symbolized WOFAN’s sustained commitment to women farmers’ empowerment and improving their crop processing skills, through training and ICT-led mechanization for better yields and incomes.
“ We have donated similar centres to other farmer groups in other states before now, but we are particularly happy with this support to the women farmers because it is historic as it is coming to them to commemorate the 2021 International Women Day celebrations.
“ WOFAN intends to replicate this type of support in many more states in Nigeria, as a strategic step towards improving the quality of their crop yields and their socio-economic wellbeing.
“ I pray they utilize the Centre with all sense of care, so that it could serve as a poverty alleviation hub for them and millions of youths and women farmers in the years ahead”, Garba said. (NAN).
