Lola Masha is the Executive Director for Corporate Services at Babban Gona Farmer Services, an organisation engaged in providing finance, business intelligence, and other services for rural farmers in the Northern geo-political zone of the country. She spoke on the experiences of her organisation on funding support and other empowerment efforts for the about 60,000 smallholder farmers reached so far, and future plans.

She said: “Babban Gona has contributed significantly to improving the lives of the rural poor in Nigeria. Our journey has not been without its challenges, but we have adopted a stance of constant improvement that keeps us innovating and changing strategies to achieve the highest impact. We have achieved a consistent year-on-year increase in the earnings of smallholder farmers and created thousands of jobs. By 2016, we had become Nigeria’s largest maize producing entity.

“We have not achieved this all on our own, but have leveraged strategic partnerships to help us develop and scale. Currently, we offer our services to small holders across five Northern states and nine hubs in Katsina, Kano, Kaduna, Bauchi and Plateau States. We have organised these smallholders into Trust Groups, providing the missing element of professional management, and enhanced their access to training, quality inputs and access to markets at harvest.

“This impact creates a ripple effect, not only in the lives of our members but extends to their families and communities as well. For instance, we have developed schemes to support female relatives of our Trust Group members, putting them on a path towards financial independence through innovative programs such as our Last Mile Retailer.” Daily Trust