The Federal Government has called for an urgent rebuilding of Nigeria’s agricultural extension system into a sustainable infrastructure capable of improving farm productivity and meeting the food needs of a rapidly growing population.
The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, made the call on Wednesday at the Africa Agribusiness Extension Summit 2026, held at the Ladi Kwali Hall of the Abuja Continental Hotel.
Kyari said the country could not depend on expanding farmland alone to feed its growing population, stressing that improved productivity would depend substantially on getting the right knowledge to farmers at the right time.
The summit, organised by Extension Africa under the theme, ‘Building Sustainable Agricultural Advisory Infrastructure for Africa,’ brought together government officials, agribusinesses, research institutions, technology providers, development partners and other stakeholders to deliberate on strengthening agricultural advisory systems across the continent.
The summit background document identified the central challenge as the fragmented and difficult-to-scale nature of agricultural advisory services, despite growing investments in agricultural productivity, food security and farmer resilience.
It said sustainable advisory infrastructure would require coordinated investment in four interconnected pillars: people, data, technology and partnerships.
Kyari, who traced the evolution of agricultural extension in Nigeria to the early 20th century, said extension had once been a highly respected and trusted presence in rural communities.
He recalled that during the period when Agricultural Development Projects (ADPs) operated at scale with World Bank support, one extension agent served about 1,000 to 1,500 farm families.
According to him, the situation has changed considerably, with one extension agent now sometimes expected to serve between 5,000 and 10,000 farmers.
‘No field officer, however committed, can meaningfully serve that number through physical visits alone,’ he said.
The minister therefore advocated a transition from extension as a conventional government service to an enduring infrastructure capable of combining professional expertise, technology, data and partnerships.
He said Nigeria had already begun deploying digital tools to bridge the widening gap between extension agents and farmers.
According to him, more than 100,000 farmers in six states currently receive weekly text messages through the Federal Department of Agricultural Extension, the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) and private partners on expected rainfall and measures to protect their crops.
He added that the Federal Government was rolling out a digital agricultural extension platform capable of providing advice through text and voice in Hausa, Igbo, Yoruba and Pidgin.
The minister also disclosed that more than 1,000 digital extension agents equipped with tablets had been deployed with the support of the National Agricultural Development Fund, while 774 agricultural desk officers were serving across the country’s local government areas.
Kyari said he had approved a steering committee to harmonise the Ministry’s extension initiatives, involving relevant departments and agencies, including the National Agricultural Research and Extension Liaison Services (NAERLS), National Agricultural Quarantine Service and Agricultural Research Council of Nigeria, with NiMet providing climate information.
He stressed that farmers should receive coordinated advice rather than competing messages from different government agencies and programmes.
The minister also cited recent investments by some state governments, including Jigawa, Kano and Oyo, in strengthening agricultural extension.
He said Jigawa had recruited and trained more than 1,500 additional extension agents and approved 1,185 motorcycles to improve their mobility, while Kano recruited 1,038 agricultural extension agents and related field workers in 2025.
Oyo, he added, had combined physical extension services with digital capability by training extension agents in digital farmland measurement and improved mapping applications.
Kyari further called for deliberate efforts to make agricultural extension attractive to young professionals, arguing that the sector could provide opportunities for young graduates to combine scientific knowledge, technology and enterprise without necessarily owning farmland.
He also stressed the need to ensure that women farmers were directly reached by advisory services, noting that women play important roles in planting, harvesting, processing and marketing.
The minister linked the urgency of strengthening extension services to Africa’s rapidly growing population, saying the continent’s projected population of about 2.5 billion by 2050 would place greater pressure on its agricultural systems.
For Nigeria, he said the challenge was even more immediate, with the country’s population projected to approach 400 million by 2050.
‘Agriculture accounts for approximately 34 per cent of total employment in Nigeria, meaning roughly one in every three working Nigerians earn a living from that sector,’ Kyari said.
He cited research which, according to him, showed that access to extension services was associated with improved household welfare and reduced food insecurity among Nigerian farming households.
Kyari also referred to a review of mobile agricultural advisory trials in sub-Saharan Africa and India, which he said found that digital advice increased yields by about four per cent and improved the likelihood of farmers adopting recommended inputs.
He maintained that the figures demonstrated why agricultural extension should be regarded as infrastructure rather than a series of short-term projects.
‘Extension must be treated as infrastructure,’ he said, adding that Africa could not build the food system required for its future population through disconnected projects that disappeared when funding ended.
He said farmer registries and extension services should also be integrated so that advisory messages could be tailored to individual farmers, crops and locations.
‘A registry tells us who the farmer is, where the farm lies and what grows on it. Extension tells the farmer what to do next,’ he said.
On artificial intelligence, Kyari urged African countries to embrace the technology while maintaining safeguards around accuracy, professional oversight and farmer data.
He said AI-powered advisory systems could provide farmers with information at any time and in languages they understood, but warned that inaccurate information delivered at scale could affect thousands of farms simultaneously. ‘Technology should extend professional advice, not replace the professional,’ he said.
The Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder, Extension Africa, Tajudeen Yahaya, said the event was designed to change the conversation around agricultural extension from merely discussing services to building the infrastructure, partnerships and systems required to sustain those services.
He identified people, technology, data and partnerships as the four pillars around which sustainable agricultural advisory infrastructure should be built.
Yahaya said the summit was intended to provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss the future of extension services and develop practical approaches to strengthening advisory infrastructure across Africa.
One of the objectives of the summit is to promote investment in the four pillars and facilitate dialogue on the policies, institutions and collaborative business models required to strengthen agricultural advisory systems.
The summit also advocates for infrastructure labs focused on the shared advisory workforce, trusted data systems, technology-enabled advisory infrastructure and commercially viable advisory models.
The Chief Operating Officer and Co-Founder of Extension Africa, Isa Abdulsamad, said greater adoption of AI and digital extension advisory services was necessary not only for farmers but also for businesses to ensure the sustainability of agricultural programmes and solutions.
He said the summit brought businesses and regulators together to develop an ‘orchestration platform’ capable of integrating research outputs and tailoring them to farmers’ circumstances.
Abdulsamad said Extension Africa’s Iroko AI had been designed to allow farmers using both basic phones and smartphones to access advisory information through interactive voice response systems and applications.
He said farmers could also escalate complex issues to extension agents through existing farmer helplines and decentralised agricultural development structures.
According to him, one of the major challenges facing agricultural advisory systems across Africa was the proliferation of siloed solutions.
He said the goal was therefore to develop an interoperable system through which different platforms could integrate rather than reproduce existing solutions independently.
In a goodwill message delivered on behalf of the Director, Federal Department of Agricultural Extension Services, Dr Samaila Tehinshe, the Deputy Director, Dr Christiana Joseph Malgwi, said strengthening extension delivery was central to achieving food security, higher productivity, employment creation and resilient food systems.
She said the department was working with state ministries of agriculture, ADPs, research institutions, universities, development partners, the private sector and farmer organisations to improve extension delivery through policy, institutional collaboration, capacity development and digital innovation.
Malgwi said digital platforms, learning tools and climate information services were already expanding farmers’ access to timely agricultural information.
She also disclosed that the Ministry, in partnership with relevant stakeholders including the Women Farmers Advancement Network (WOFAN), was working towards the passage of an agricultural extension bill currently before the National Assembly.
The summit is expected to provide a platform for stakeholders to develop a shared framework for sustainable agricultural advisory infrastructure and strengthen coordination across government, industry, research, technology, and development institutions.