The Nigeria Incentive Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending(NIRSAL) was established by the Central Bank of Nigeria to collaborate with all the players in the agricultural sector to fix the frictions in the agribusiness value chains and de risk it to unlock financing and investments. Despite this strategic intervention for Nigerian farmers, agriculture is still underfunded due to certain risks which have made banks not to dole out the funds to operators in the agro-value chain.

The Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL Plc.) is a US$500million Non-Bank Financial Institution wholly-owned by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) created to Redefine, Dimension, Measure, Re-Price and Share agribusiness-related credit risks in Nigeria.

Established in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) and Nigerian Bankers’ Committee in 2013, NIRSAL’s mandate is to stimulate the flow of affordable finance and investments into the agricultural sector by de-risking the agribusiness finance value chain, fixing agricultural value chains, building long-term capacity, and institutionalizing incentives for agricultural lending through its five (5) strategic pillars, namely: Risk Sharing, Insurance, Technical Assistance, Incentives and Rating.

NIRSAL has recently introduced Mapping To Market Concept which will redesign agricultural financing risk management and agribusiness models that take cognizance of the fact that the banks will only fund a sector that is secured, with controlled risk and structured. To redesign the Black Hole, i.e. Upstream Agricultural Sector, which has high risks making it unattractive for bank lending despite being the foundation that other components of the ecosystem are dependent on, NIRSAL has acquired advanced geospatial technologies such as Satellite Imaging Data to be supported by Unmanned Aerial System platforms. These tools offer the following benefits:

• Efficient for monitoring large swathes of farmland such as in the North East and North West region due to their land mass
• Identification of the most ecologically endowed areas for specific commodities
• Remote sensing of crop health status and aggregation of fragmented farmlands.

Lack of available and accurate data to support investments in agriculture in Nigeria is a bane to the value chain and the acquisition of these state of the art technology by NIRSAL will correct this anomaly.

Through its Mapping To Market redesign, NIRSAL will pre-sell smallholder farming Geo-cooperatives to finance. They are developed and mapped in sync with the natural ecologies of specific commodities with farmers who will be deepened with financial and technical capabilities to produce specific crops in large quantities to service the offtake market coordinated by NIRSAL in line with pre-agreed quantity, quality and price parameters.

This initiative will create thousands of large, integrated, bankable clusters of farmers with a minimum ticket of 250 farmers mapped to a 250Ha Geo-Cooperative to downstream markets under guaranteed offtake arrangements such as facilitation of working capital and asset financing for all key stakeholders in the specific commodity value chain. Mapping of these players to each other and the Geo-Cooperative tickets, domiciliation of all loan accounts with a financing bank or a consortium of banks and a near zero cash movement between the locked in parties to the transaction will deepen the agro space in Nigeria. Anchored by NIRSAL’s Credit Risk Guarantee supported by its Risk Management Tools, Techniques, Methodologies, Processes, Technical Assistance Facility and Global Partnerships, the inherent capabilities will provide a holistic monitoring mechanism for each project.

Nigeria’s agricultural industry will soon witness its golden moment courtesy of the Mapping To Market strategic intervention to fully unlock its potential for food security and economic prosperity.

The Federal Ministry of Information has on Tuesday, commissioned the National Emergency Toll-Free Number – 112 in Katsina State. The Honorable Minister of Communication, Dr. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, said the goal is to establish Emergency Communication Centers (ECC), in each state of the federation.

Before now, only a few states in Nigeria like Anambra, Akwa Ibom, Benue, Edo, Enugu, FCT, Imo, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Ondo, Ogun, Oyo and Plateau have operational 112 Emergency Communication Centers. And its effectiveness was not at all times certain. A reason why the Lagos State Government created the 767 toll free emergency number.

In June, the Federal Executive Council (FEC), directed the Nigerian Communication Commission (NCC), to establish 112 centers in each state. The FEC also directed that training should be given to personnel for the effective dispatch of distress calls to relevant agencies.

Each state is required to volunteer a piece of land for the purpose of the call center.

Hon. Pantami said the move is timely considering prevalent security challenges existing in the country right now, and other cases of emergencies like flood or fire.

He also used the opportunity to campaign for SIM registration, emphasizing that every unregistered sim card will be cut off on the 25th of September. He said the decision is to use the medium to checkmate the activities of criminal elements operating behind phone lines. That once a crime is committed using a telephone, it would only take 60 minutes to fish out the culprit.

The Minister said the next state in line for ECC is Ogun, and urged Nigerians to display security consciousness by alerting security agencies when they notice criminal activities.

The Nigerian Police, Nigerian Civil Defense Corps, National Emergency Management Agency, Fire services, Federal Road Safety Corps etc. are all connected to the ECC, and their personnel have been urged to live up to their responsibilities in cases of emergency.

On September 20, 2019, Country representatives at the on-going 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA 74), voted either in favour of or against the responsibility to protect and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. Surprisingly, some countries decided to abstain from voting. The responsibility to protect “embodies a political commitment to end the worst forms of violence and persecution”. The principle was formed following the inability of the international community to prevent the atrocities of the Balkans and ethnic cleansing in the Rwandan massacre of the 1990s, coupled with the public outcry, criticizing the military intervention in Kosovo by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as overreaching and a violation of the prohibition of the use of force.

I struggle to understand why any nation within the bounds of reasonableness and good conscience would vote against a principle as laudable as the responsibility to protect. It is even worse and a sign of reckless indifference if a nation abstains from voting.

The figure below shows the outcome of the vote for the inclusion of item 131 (the responsibility to protect and the prevention of genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity) in the draft of the agenda of the 74^th session of the UN General Assembly.

The UN General Assembly is the main deliberative, policymaking and representative organ of the UN. All Member States have equal representation and each of the 193 Members in the Assembly has one vote. It is important to note that votes on all resolutions require a simple majority except recommendations on peace and security, the election of Security Council members, Economic and Social Council members, and budgetary questions which require a two-thirds majority of vote by Member States.  Unfortunately, resolutions passed by the UN General Assembly is not binding on Member States. That power resides only with the UN Security Council acting under Chapter VII of the Charter.

The non-binding power of resolutions by the UN General Assembly could partly explain why of all the 50 African countries present, only Morocco, Senegal and South Africa voted in favour of including the responsibility to protect in the agenda of the UNGA 74.

ARGUMENTS AGAINST THE PRINCIPLE OF RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT

Besides the non-binding nature of the UN General Assembly resolutions, what could be the other reasons for the African countries that voted against or abstained from voting? Two reasons quickly come to mind – The unpredictability of the extent of force in military intervention where misuse is probable, and more importantly, the likelihood of undermining of State sovereignty. Interestingly, most of the countries that voted against the inclusion of the responsibility to protect on the UNGA 74 agenda are predominantly resource-rich countries which raises the question of trust. I get it.

Addressing these concerns would require credible commitment from intervening forces to abide by the spirit and letter of the principle as set out in paragraphs 138, 139 and 140, respectively. Note that the use of force applies only when appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other peaceful means fail to achieve the expected result. The principle expressly states that, “should peaceful means be inadequate and national authorities manifestly fail to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity”, the International Community through the United Nations would intervene to restore peace. Military intervention becomes expedient under this circumstance because the world would be playing a zero-sum game if we choose not to act in the face of unconscionable and brazen crimes against humanity.

WHY DOES THE RESPONSIBILITY TO PROTECT MATTER?   

Article 2 of the Human Rights Act clearly specifies the right to life as fundamental and sacrosanct, implying that nobody, including the Government, can try to end your life. It mandates Government to make laws and take appropriate steps to protect any life in danger of death. It is basic knowledge that no meaningful development can take place in a hostile environment. Let us awaken our consciousness by at least having these conversations and subsequently following them up with conscientious actions.

The figure below is a report by the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) showing the trend in source countries of refugees as at the end of 2018. African countries make up 7 of the top 10 source countries for refugees globally.

Source: UNHCR, Global Trends Forced Displacement in 2018

While South Sudan, Somalia and Burundi recorded a drop in the number of refugee seekers year-on-year, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Central African Republic, and Eritrea increased between 2017 and 2018. Responsibility to protect matters because human lives matter.

I sincerely hope that African countries have not individually and collectively made a costly political choice by their refusal to vote in favour of the responsibility to protect. Only time will tell.

In a digital age, millions of people spend so much of their time poking around digital platforms. Businesses are becoming increasingly aware of this fact and therefore leveraging on the popularity of these platforms to promote their goods and services. How does your business leverage on this?

Marketing is the act of connecting with customers with a bid to convince them towards buying a product or subscribing to a service. Marketing, in whatever form, is one of the key activities that every business must partake in, as no business can survive without effective marketing and publicity. Marketing refers to activities undertaken by a company to promote the buying or selling of a product or service. Marketing includes advertising, selling, and delivering products to consumers or other businesses.

If the objective of your business is to sell more products or services, then marketing is what helps you achieve that goal. Anything that you use to communicate with your customers in a way that persuades them to buy your products or services is marketing, including advertising, social media, coupons, sales and even how products are displayed. Marketing is the process of teaching consumers why they should choose your product or service over those of your competitors. The key to successful marketing is finding the right marketing strategy (including your message, timing, and method of communication) to reach and influence your consumers.

Digital marketing is the marketing of products or services using digital technologies, mainly on the Internet, but also including mobile phones, display advertising, and any other digital medium.

The Benefits of Digital Marketing to Business

Digital marketing is a way to promote brands and products online and through other digital channels. Most businesses have a specific audience they are trying to reach, and digital marketing aims to help businesses reach these target consumers through the internet and other digital avenues.

There are a number of different digital technologies that marketers and companies use to get their marketing message to their target audience. In addition to their website, a company might also use PPC and display ads, email marketing, mobile technology like smartphones, social media, and other mediums to attract and engage their target consumers.

Other benefits of Digital Marketing includes:

1. Informed Decision with the Valuable Data and Analytics: With digital marketing, you can have an idea of the exact number of people who have viewed your website’s homepage in real time. With google analytics, you can track stats and information about your marketing website. It will let you know about?—?the number of people visiting your business page their geographic location the sex, age and interests of the visitors how much time they are spending on your site the source of traffic from various gadgets website bounce rates how the traffic has changed over time
2. Higher Revenues: It’s a well-known fact that higher conversion rates can be generated by effective digital marketing techniques. Hence, it will deliver loads of profitable benefits for your business in terms of better and higher revenues. While advertising your brand, you’re sure of getting influx of revenues from Ads and marketing strategy channels.
3. Compete with Large Corporations: Digital marketing shouldn’t sound as foreign as binary code to you. Don’t worry if you are dealing even with a small industry. The importance of digital marketing also lies in the fact that it lets you compete head to head with big brands and large corporations. From a small vendor to a large powerhouse, digital marketing offers an affordable and effective marketing tactics. Small brands can drive traffic both locally and across the country by reaching out to their target consumers.
4. Earn Trust and Build Brand Reputation: Digital Marketing leverages on social media signals, social proof and testimonials availed from bonafide consumers. The more reliable these social signals are, the higher the trust rate it can generate from targeted audiences. People would trust information about a particular brand if the data comes from people they know. And once you meet their expectations, your brand reputation will go viral. Eventually, it will open new doors of opportunities for reaching bigger markets. Businesses can use their digital platforms to build their company’s brand and reputation. A well-developed website, a blog featuring quality and useful articles, a social media channel that is highly interactive are some of the ways by which a business can build its brand.

Conclusion

It’s not easy as business to invest time in Digital Marketing and its Channels. Regardless, if you’re not yet utilizing the power of digital marketing for your business, you are missing a lot of golden opportunities.