Liberia seeks to partner Nigeria on agric devt

Mr. Patrick Tarnue Worsie, Assistant Minister for Planning and Development in Liberia, has said his country is set to sign a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Nigeria on transfer technology for agricultural development in Liberia.


Worsie who disclosed this during a visit by a Liberian delegation to the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi (FIIRO) in Lagos recently said Liberia wishes to strengthen collaboration with the Nigerian government in the area of knowledge sharing and power development.

“We have a five-year agricultural transformation agenda and what we have been doing in the last five months is to see how we can build capacity of our people. We are doing this with support from the African Development Bank (AfDB).

“Our visit, we believe will help shape the ongoing agenda in our country. This is what has made our visit to Nigeria pertinent,’’ he said.

The minister said his government was in the process of procuring 15 flash dryers from FIIRO, adding that the delegation would be in Nigeria for a few days to exchange knowledge on agriculture while a previous delegation had similarly been in Nigeria to share knowledge on the rice value chain.

Prof. Gloria Elemo, Director General of FIIRO, said no other organisation had worked on cassava as much as FIIRO had done. She said Nigeria could save as much as $3.5 billion by just including high quality cassava flour in its bread, adding that 300,000 jobs could also be created on the cassava value chain.

“Nigeria is the leading producer of cassava in the world so it is our area of comparative advantage. So far, we have discovered over 25 products from cassava alone and we are still discovering more. Some of the cassava products are garri, cassava tapioca, cassava chips, cassava macaroni, high quality cassava starch, cassava adhesives, cassava ethanol and fufu. It is also used for growing mushroom,’’ she said.


The FIIRO director-general said that over 500,000 micro, small and medium scale enterprises are affiliated with the institute. She added that the institute also transferred no less than 25 of its technology to some medium and small scale enterprises.

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