FAO to hand over CAPI system to Federal Ministry of Agriculture

In a bid to ensure Nigerians have easy access to more data on agriculture, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Nigeria will hand over the Computer Assisted Personal Interview (CAPI) system developed through the Agricultural Market and Information System (AMIS) project to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development.

AMIS is an inter-agency platform developed by FAO under the auspices of the United Nations and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. AMIS was initiated in 2011 by the Ministers of Agriculture of the G20 countries to improve food market transparency, coordination and monitor price volatility. AMIS is composed of G20 Members, Spain and seven additional major exporting and importing countries of agricultural commodities, one of which is Nigeria; recognised as a major agricultural hub in sub-Saharan Africa.

As part of the deliverables of AMIS in Nigeria, CAPI System was developed for the collection of agricultural data in Nigeria. The CAPI system will be domiciled in the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD) for supervision and monitoring, after the honourable Minister of Agriculture, Chief Audu Ogbeh, receives the platform next week.

The CAPI system is also equipped with the capacity to provide near real-time agriculture data, through crowd-sourced data from various players in the agriculture value chain. The platform has a web-based repository that will provide easy access to agricultural data producing agencies and other agricultural market stakeholders across Nigeria.

The CAPI system will also impact the ability of Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) to execute their mandates by reducing the cost of data production as it will eliminate the cost of printing paper questionnaires, hiring data entry operators, and use of courier services. The solution will also reduce data production time by providing near real-time data from the field to data processing units of the MDAs. In addition, the system will enable a proper monitoring and evaluation of data collection via the use of GPS data submission alongside every data collected.

Speaking on Tuesday, the National Project Coordinator, Mr Olutayo Oyawale, said the CAPI system will provide an unprecedented access to agriculture information from various stakeholders across the country that will, in turn, deliver tremendous growth for the agriculture sector.

The AMIS platform is one of the measures put in place by the FAO and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation to prevent global food crisis and achieve global food security.

Speaking further, Mr Oyawale said: “Real-time data gathering has always been a problem in the agricultural sector. With this CAPI System, investors, agriculture merchants, traders and farmers can make better decisions and optimise their activities in their respective roles.”

FAO also conducted a pilot use of crowdsourcing data collection system for 18 crops, covering a period of 4 months from November 2016, from four markets and ten Local Government Associations (LGAs) in Kaduna State, using a well-coordinated crowdsourcing operation in the State. The pilot exercise employed the services of about 801 farmers and traders combined in Kaduna state.