At the 50th anniversary of International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA), the Director General beckoned on youths to have a change of mindset towards agriculture by seeing it as a source of business and revenue for them.
In an exclusive interview with CEOAfrica, Dr Nteranya sanginga said “IITA’s 50th anniversary was an historic moment.”
He said “every 1st Monday of the month, we approve casual workers which we pay on daily basis to work in the field, but it is to my surprise to see unemployed graduates of different fields apply for such job.”
However, “instead of loosing these youths, we basically decided to convince them and change their mind set that agriculture can be a source of business for them. That was how we started with them and help them build capacities of their own,” he said.
Also speaking in an interview with CEOAfrica is a representative of the Sahara Group. In his own view, for IITA to have survived 50 years means that they are putting in a model of sustainability, they have kept their values, qualities, made themselves relevant in the society and they have impacted lives.
He further stated that IITA is awesome and there is nothing more that impresses him than seeing what we are capable of in Nigeria.
He gave kudos to Nigerian youths, “saying that all they need is to be incentivized and pointed towards the direction where they can find themselves.”
In his advice to IITA, “success will bring success but the only thing needed is to let the society know what their programs are and when these programs succeed, these people will acknowledge it and join such program,” he said.
