ECOWAS: Liftoff Regional Epicenter for Fertilizer and Soil Health

By Abdul Rahman Bangura-

NEW AFRICA DAILY NEWS (NADN) Freetown, Sierra Leone–  …Africa could be the grub basket of the globe, counterproductive usage of fertilizers and poor management of soil health, amongst other factors, keeps Africa stumbling to adequately feed itself.

Creating on the voyage undertaken since the Abuja Declaration on Fertilizer in 2006 through the May 2024 Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Summit clasped in Nairobi, Kenya, ECOWAS, in alliance with technical and financial members such as OCP Africa, IITA, APNI, IFDC, UM6P and the World Bank primarily, officially launched this 26th June 2024, the Regional Hub for Fertilizer and Soil Health for West Africa and the Sahel.

The Hub strives to enrich soil health and agrarian productivity across the region. The Hub is hosted at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) campus in Ibadan, Nigeria, with initial appropriation from the World Bank and OCP-Africa.

The Hub is an ECOWAS sub-program, supervised by a Consortium of technical partners, comprising IITA, the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), Africa Plant Nutrition Institute (APNI), OCP-Africa and University of Mohamed 6 Polytechnic (UM6P), and harmonized by IITA.

The central function of the Hub is to deliver technical aid to the evolution and enactment of acquisitions in fertilizer and soil health in the ECOWAS nations with inclusion in Mauritania and Chad. It is implied for nations of WA and the Sahel to enhance long-term soil health and fertility management for enhanced harvest and profitability, efficient resource use (nutrients, water, seeds), and climate soundness.

This event commemorates a substantial juncture in the collaborative endeavor to make better soil health and farming productivity across in West Africa and the Sahel.

As the role of the launch event, the ECOWAS Commissioner for Economic Affairs and Agriculture – Massandjé Touré_Litsé, autographed one MoU with IITA to carry out the regional Agricultural Policy (ECOWAP) and the West Africa Hub and another one with OCP Africa for training prospects in agrarian elongation on fertilizer and soil health at the Polytechnic University of Mohamed 6 in Morocco.

To remember, deciphering the issue of soil health in Africa needs more than technical aid. Working jointly through useful co-operations and synergies are one of the foolproof routes to affect the livelihoods of the inhabitants.

ECOWAS, thus, exhorts all stakeholders to merge muscles to veer around the ripple of eats insecurity in West Africa. The West Africa Fertilizer and Soil Health Hub, along with the roadmap and motion agendas, furnishes a boosting framework for attaining this purpose.

New Africa Daily News Abdul Rahman Bangura Reports, Africa Correspondent