The Lagos State Acting Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms. Abisola Olusanya has announced that LASG is setting up a centre that will help Lagosians who are into agricultural business sell their produce online to customers outside Nigeria.
It will be part e-commerce hub, part one-stop-shop for necessary quality certification like NAFDAC and SON certifications.
“We are trying to setup hubs or platforms where we are able to get our producers to come together to be able to produce in a sanitary and hygienic condition, so that we can get organisations like SON and NAFDAC to do the necessary assessment on the items being processed and exported.
“Essentially, we want to be able to make it easier for our producers, to be able to sell in a way that they do not have to go through many channels to certify their products. We want to ensure that the certification takes place in one location so that they can easily be exported.
…To let them know that sales do not depend entirely on the physical interaction between the farmers and consumers and that they can set up e-commerce platforms to sell their produce,” she said.
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Where is AGOA when you need it? This was one of the reasons AGOA failed in Nigeria: farmers couldn’t get a dedicated centre where they could get info on the right quality of agricultural produce to export to the United States. Getting certification when they had the right quality was also an onerous task.
As a result, many of the few farmers that tried to export had their goods rejected.
But an Igbo proverb says it is never too late to get on the right track. We hope execution of this project is as good as its plans, because it is much needed at this time…
