FAO renews commitment to food security, building resilience in N/East

The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of United Nations has renewed its commitment to supporting food security and building of locals resilience in North East region.

The Head of North East Office of FAO, Mr Alhassan Cisse, made this known on Monday in Maiduguri, while declaring open a workshop on Strengthening the Organisational Capacity of Local and National Actors (LNAs) for effective Emergency Response in Borno, Adamawa and Yobe States.

Represented by Head of Emergency Programme of the office, Ms Sahar Fallal-Ali, he said that over the years, the organisation with funding from donors has invested in building the capacities of LNAs for better implementation of its programmes.

“For instance in 2022 alone, FAO trained 51 Farmers Field School (FFS) facilitators and 85 other partners.

“This is aimed at strengthening the capacity of local and national actors in humanitarian response.

“It is also for LNAs to take more leading role in the humanitarian response and also to take more leading role in the coordination mechanism for the LNAs to improve their effectiveness and efficiency of humanitarian action,” Cisse said.

He noted that with funding from Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA), FAO is piloting the localisation agenda in Nigeria where it conducted a gap assessment of 20 LNAs in the North East.

According to him, the workshop will strengthen the capacities of the LNAs based on identified gaps to enable them effectively participate in planning and implementing humanitarian and resilience programmes as well as timely response to humanitarian crisis in agriculture and food security to promote resilience.