World bank expands commercial agric project to five states

THE World Bank assisted Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP) is to be expanded to five other states of the federation to cover the six geopolitical zones and further increase the number of beneficiaries.This will bring the number of participating states to ten (10), according to a statement by the bank's Senior Communications Specialist, Mr. Obadiah Tohomdek.He said the decision was taken at the Project's Mid-Term Review Mission, which ended in Lagos recently, where it was also agreed that the project be restructured to enhance speedy implementation, as well as, prompt disbursement to project beneficiaries.The mission team visited four participating states and met with stakeholders, beneficiaries and top government officials. The states are Enugu, Cross River, Kano, and Lagos.The Task Team Leader of the project, Dr. Lucas Akapa informed the states governments that CADP would ensure alignment with Federal and state governments agricultural policies, especially, the new Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).Dr. Lucas Akapa also disclosed that, to ensure sustainability of the project's various interventions, the project woud make adequate arrangement towards ensuring the sustainability of the project after its closure in December, 2014. 'The issue of sustainability is very important as most of projects' interventions died after the closure of the projects,' said Lucas Akapa.In his own remarks the Nation Project Co-ordinator of CADP, Dr. Amin Babandi said the Mid-Term Review Mission was meant to reflect and take a comprehensive review of the general performance of all the components of the project and study the lessons learnt with the view to correcting them.'At half way, we need to reflect and get those aspects that are correct and enhance them, look at those that are not working and correct them,' Babandi said.
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