As part of its ongoing efforts towards addressing the issue of low agricultural yields and food security in Nigeria, ActionAid Nigeria (AAN) has organised a 2-day Media Workshop on inclusive and sustainable food System Reporting in Abuja.
“This media workshop is timely and fundamental to our work and collective efforts that are being put together alongside our partners such as GiZ at AAN towards addressing myriad of challenges facing agriculture and food production in Nigeria today” said Suwaiba Muhammad Dankabo, Deputy Country Director, AAN while addressing the media practitioners drawn across the country at the workshop.
She added that the roles media play in creating awareness and supporting advocacy for improved food production are quite germane to the overall outcome of any agricultural project or programme set out to be executed.
Azubike Nwokoye, Food system Specialist, AAN, speaking to the journalists at the workshop said, the essence of the training was to enhance the capacity of the media practitioners by gaining deeper understanding of the issues and challenges facing the agricultural sector in Nigeria.
“Without the media having proper knowledge of what is going on within the agricultural sector, their reportage may never produce any positive impacts.”
“Therefore it is crucial for the media to understand these critical issues to report about as well as different perspectives to report from, these are what we hope to achieve through this 2-day workshop.” he said.
Speaking on how AAN’s intervention would improve food production in Nigeria, he said, for years, AAN has worked with communities to ensure resilience and support their food and nutrition security, even though there is still a lot to be done.
“For instance, we have a project called Strategic Partnership for Agro-Ecology and Climate Justice for West Africa currently, focused in some states. This project was designed to support 120,000 farmers directly. This project is supporting these farmers in terms of training them in Agro-Ecology practices so they can increase their income, crops yields and diversification” Nwokoye said.
Bivan Magoni, a Broadcast Journalist and one of the Participants at the workshop while speaking to our correspondent said the workshop was an eye-opening experience for him.
“Having being in the media practice for long, yet being part of this workshop and learning new methodologies in reporting on agriculture and food system would certainly improve my reportage going forward.” Magoni said.