By Utitofon Idara
The Chief Executive Officer of Gluwa blockchain, a finance platform, said their platform would transform the Lagos State agricultural sector through digitisation of agricultural assets.
He said the project would entail partnering with the Lagos State Ministries of Agriculture, Finance, Science and Technology as well as the Lands Bureau on the integration of physical farmlands into non-fungible tokens in a bid to provide access to digital asset-backed loans for all Lagos State farmers.
“Agriculture being one of the backbones of the Nigerian economy, with 35% of the population in its employ, must be modernised for the government and the organised private sector to realise its full potential and attendant benefits.
“According to the five-year Lagos State Agricultural and Food Systems road map, where the sector is projected to generate upwards of $10 billion by the year 2025, it would be of immense value for agricultural assets to be identified, recorded, and traded using innovative blockchain technology”, he explained.
At a recent visit of the Gluwa team to His Majesty, Oba Gbolahan Lawal, the Oniru of Iruland and former Commissioner of Agriculture in Lagos State, the team detailed their plans to build a gateway for local farmers to access the international markets via borderless financial services ranging from decentralised finance loans to selling on global commodity futures markets.
The administration of Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu aims to make Lagos State fully self-sufficient in the areas of wealth generation, value creation, food security and industrialization of the agricultural sector. This was made known at the launch of the Agricultural and Food Systems road map in the company of the Commissioner for Agriculture, Abisola Olusanya.
According to vanguard, he concluded saying, “Our strategies for sustainable agricultural development shall focus on three pillars. First, we will grow the upstream sector through interventions by leveraging technologies that can lower the cost of production in the value chain; focus on growing the midstream and downstream sectors that are of value and lastly, we will improve on private sector participation by developing and initiating policies that would encourage more private investments in agriculture.”
