The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), in collaboration with the Association of Northern Agricultural and Allied Commodities Practitioners (ANAACOP), has launched agro e-Naira, a farmers programmable digital currency engagement, to ensure food security in the region and country at large.
The CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, who was represented by the Director of Information Technology and Coordinator of the Naira Program of the CBN, Hajiya Rakiya Muhammad, disclosed in Yola, that the program targets one million farmers in northeastern states in the 2023 farming season.
The E-Naira was introduced by the CBN in October 2021 as a store of value and reliable medium of exchange, targeted at banked and unbanked merchants and individuals in order to make transfers, buying, and selling easier, cheaper, and less cumbersome.
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Aside from aiding Nigeria’s transition into a fully cashless system, the E-Naira platform was created to fix finance-related problems to serve Nigerians better in areas like health care, agriculture, payment of bills, etc.
Emefiele noted that 50 farmers were targeted to test run the program in Adamawa currently, adding that it is expected to scale up to one million farmers towards the end of the year and increase to another four million by 2024.
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The Chairman of the ANAACOP, Mr. Sadiq Daware, lauded President Muhammadu Buhari and the CBN for the E-Naira program, while assuring farmers that they would not regret it at the end of the day, as he stressed that it would reduce intermediaries and provide easy access to credit and financial services for farmers in rural communities of Northern Nigeria.
“Today we are happy to inform all Nigerians that ANAACOP through the CBN has gotten it right to make sure that farmers, particularly smallholder farmers, will get loans at ease with little or no hitches leveraging the e-Naira program,” he said.
