—-To establish geospatial crop monitoring, food security planning
By Johnbosco Agbakwuru
ABUJA— THE Presidency on Wednesday sent a high-level delegation to Morocco to finalise a partnership for developing Nigeria’s first National Agro-Productivity System.
The delegation is headed by Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, Deputy Chief of Staff in the Office of the Vice President, who is representing Vice President Kashim Shettima, Chair of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit.
Technical Assistant on Agriculture to the President (Office of the VP), Marion Moon, disclosed this in a statement she signed titled ‘Federal Government Launches Strategic Partnership to Strengthen Nigeria’s National Agricultural
Intelligence Capability.’
Moon, who is also the Executive Secretary of the PFSCU, revealed that the shared geospatial intelligence platform will give federal, state and local governments real-time data on crop location, land availability, yield projections and food security threats nationwide.
According to Moon, Hadejia will sign the Memorandum of Understanding between the PFSCU, OCP Africa and Ground Truth Analytics on Friday, July 17, 2026.
The PFSCU scribe also noted that the initiative marks a shift in how the country approached agricultural planning.
She said, “The future of agriculture depends not only on improved inputs, but equally on stronger intelligence.
“Through this partnership, Nigeria is strengthening the institutional capabilities needed to plan better, respond faster, and make more informed decisions.
“It also reflects the Federal Government’s commitment to stronger coordination, recognising that sustainable development is accelerated when institutions work together around shared national priorities.”
The National Agro-Productivity System will be coordinated by the PFSCU under the National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism approved by the National Council on Agriculture and Food Security, she added.
The initiative, Moon explained, “will provide Government with timely insights on agricultural land availability, crop location, crop performance, growth stages and expected yield outcomes, strengthening production planning, food security monitoring, agribusiness investment, early warning, and policy development.”
Phase One of the initiative will comprise a six-month pilot across three states, focusing on localisation of the technology through dataset calibration, ground-truthing and national capacity building.
The pilot will establish the technical and institutional foundations needed before the system is rolled out nationwide, Moon added.
“The visit will also provide an opportunity for the Nigerian delegation to undertake technical engagements and institutional visits that will strengthen national capacity and support implementation of the pilot,” she stated.
The Nigeria-Morocco partnership comes exactly three years after President Bola Tinubu on July 13, 2023, declared a state of emergency on food security.
Nigeria’s food security crisis deepened in 2023, when the removal of the petrol subsidy and the unification of the naira exchange window triggered a severe food inflation spiral that pushed the cost of staples beyond the reach of millions of households.
At its peak in early 2025, Nigeria’s food inflation exceeded 40 per cent year-on-year, among the highest in the world, with rice, maize, tomatoes and cooking oil recording the sharpest increases.
The World Bank, the Food and Agriculture Organisation and UNICEF had all raised the alarm about the scale of food insecurity in the country, with UNICEF estimating that over 31.8 million children under five are acutely malnourished.
According to the UNICEF, it was the second highest burden in the world after India.
The crisis was further compounded by persistent insecurity in the North-West and North-Central farming belts, flooding and climate disruptions in the Middle Belt.
This also included structural weaknesses in the country’s agricultural data infrastructure that made it difficult for planners to accurately monitor production, anticipate shortfalls or target interventions.
In July 2024, Vice President Kashim Shettima inaugurated the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit following a memo submitted to President Tinubu on the need for a dedicated food systems council to coordinate the administration’s response to the crisis.
The PFSCU was constituted under the Presidential Economic Coordinating Council, with Marion Moon, Technical Assistant to the President on Agriculture in the Office of the Vice President, serving as its Executive Secretary.
The unit says it has since driven a series of stakeholder engagements across all six geopolitical zones, convening state governors, agricultural ministry officials, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and development partners around the National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism.
The NAPM was approved by the National Council on Agriculture and Food Security to align federal and state agricultural interventions around shared priorities.
In March 2026, The PUNCH reported that the PFSCU deployed state coordinators across 13 pilot states to strengthen intelligence gathering on agricultural production patterns, following an earlier mass abandonment of rice cultivation by over 3,500 farmers who recorded cumulative losses estimated at N93bn.
Moon described the MoU as the PFSCU’s first major international technology partnership.
OCP Africa, the continental arm of Morocco’s OCP Group, is ranked the world’s largest phosphate exporter and a major fertiliser manufacturer operating across at least 30 African countries.
Meanwhile, Ground Truth Analytics, which specialises in satellite-based crop monitoring and geospatial agricultural data, has been deployed across several African markets to deliver field-level insights.
The delegation to Morocco comprises representatives from the Office of the Vice President, the PFSCU, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Justice, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, the National Space Research and Development Agency and the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services, alongside technical experts supporting the initiative’s implementation.
The post Nigeria, Morocco agree deal on agricultural intelligence food security appeared first on Vanguard News.