Lagos State Commissioner for Agriculture, Ms Abisola Olusanya, signed the agreement on behalf of the state government, while the Country Representative of FAO, Dr Fred Kafeero, signed for FAO.

The event took place on Friday in Lagos. Lagos State Government is contributing $150,000 while FAO is supporting with $50,000 for the project.

Olusanya said at the ceremony that the project would run for the next six months, with FAO providing technical and financial assistance for the inception/value chain analysis phase of the intervention.

She said “It is, therefore, my fervent hope that the partnership we are activating today will surely unleash the economic, environmental and nutritional potential in the coconut value chain in the state. The partnership will be on a sustainable basis, as multiple strategies both locally and internationally along with the up, mid and down streams of the value chain, will be deployed to promote production, processing, utilisation and commercialisation. This will be done using the Accelerator for Agriculture and Agro-industry Development and Innovation Plus (3ADI+) Approach as proposed by the FAO-UN. On behalf of the governor and good people of Lagos State, I warmly express our appreciation to the FAO-UN for its interest in Lagos State and in coconut value chain development in particular,”

In his remarks, Kafeero commended Lagos for being the first state to create a unilateral trust fund in the country, saying that it had set an example for other states.

“We saw that we have a comprehensive picture of the situation; we have to develop a strategy that will take us to where we want to go in the next 10 years. To do that, we need current information for us to plan better. The inception phase is largely for backlogs – collecting information about the value chain, looking at production gaps, deficiencies in the processing, the technologies currently used, involvement of stakeholders, market issues. For this phase, we are talking about, the FAO has agreed to provide technical assistance, carry the state government along, get experts that you need. We will expose you to what is happening in other countries with regard to coconut and then discover the area that fits where we want to be as Lagos. We believe that in the next six months, we should have developed a strategy. Then we go ahead with the implementation plan over the period, and that plan will be costed to help us also to use that particular document to have roundtable discussions with potential financiers. I need to say here also that besides FAO, we have colleagues from UNIDO, another UN entity, which mandate is largely on agro-processing and technologies of that nature, market access, etc, and they agreed to work with us so that together, we can support this coconut value chain. Going forward, we shall have more investors but I see the role of the government in terms of engaging would-be-investors and I see that public-private partnerships would be very tremendous for this project,”