Agro-Processing, Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support (APPEALS) a World Bank-assisted project has assisted 55,864 in the six participating states.
The APPEALS project is a 6-year project designed in line with the Agricultural Promotion Policy (APP) of the Federal Government.
It is also expected that 35 percent of the beneficiaries of the project will be women and youths who will be empowered along Rice, Cocoa, Poultry, Cashew, Maize, Ginger, Diary, Wheat, Tomato, Cassava and Aquaculture value chains.
Addressing journalists at the Implementation Progress Monitoring Meeting of APPEALS’ States and the National Coordination Office with the World Bank, the Project Operations Manager of APPEALS project at the National Coordinating Office, Dr Salisu Garba, said the project has reached 55,864 so far.
He said the beneficiaries cut across the individual beneficiaries, like commodity interest groups, Small and Medium Enterprises, women and youth empowerment.
He said some beneficiaries were recorded in rural infrastructure, like the roads, the aggregation centres and other facilities that were provided under the project, including people with disabilities and special needs.
“So far as at the last mission, we were able to record 55,864 beneficiaries and the target for the programme is 60,000, which is 10,000 per state, you could see we have gone far and before we conclude, we are sure we are going to exceed the 60,000 beneficiaries target”, he stated.
National Project Coordinator, Alhaji Mohammed Sani Jobdi said the purpose of the meeting is to review the progress on the implementation of the APPEALS project.
“The objective of the meeting is for us to x-ray ourselves to see how far we have been able to achieve the project development objectives”, he said.
Jobdi said since the inception of the project and even during the 9th mission which was concluded in November 2022, it has recorded achievements and even surpassed some of the project development objectives of the APPEALS project.
“The project is greatly making a lot of impacts when you look at the different components starting with the support given to the beneficiaries under the commodity interest group for the various value chain investment plans that are being promoted in the different states.
“Under the women and youth empowerment programme, we have almost concluded the empowerment as far as the support of grant that was given under that component to our beneficiaries.
“In terms of infrastructure, we have completed infrastructures in some states and others are in different forms of completion.
“So far so good, the project is almost coming to a conclusion in 2023 and we want to categorically say that we are satisfied with the progress made so far in the project”, he explained.
The National Project Coordinator said the project has made impact in the beneficiaries in the states whereby in terms of empowerment, a number of people have been empowered through training, capacity building in terms of the normal commodity interest groups that they grouped into different clusters to support them in their different value chain investment.
“Another important aspect of the women and youth programme is that it is all inclusive because we take into consideration social inclusiveness where even persons with disabilities and special needs are taken care of about 5 per cent of those empowered in each participating states,” he added.
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