NEEP-AI
Ministry and department
NEEP-AI is operated by the Federal Department of Agricultural Extension for the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security.
FMAFS
Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security
The Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security (FMAFS), formerly the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, was established in 1966 to drive agricultural transformation and national food security.
Mandate
- Ensuring national food security.
- Generating employment through agricultural expansion.
- Supporting agro-industrial raw material supply.
- Promoting market access and competitiveness for export earnings.
- Facilitating rural socio-economic development.
- Managing agricultural value chains with farmers, states, and other partners.
12
Technical departments
13
Service departments
4
Federal universities
46
Parastatals and agencies
Leadership
Recent work
National Cooperative Digital Identity System
The Ministry signed a memorandum of understanding to deploy a national cooperative digital identity and governance system, including a six-month revalidation of cooperatives.
Agricultural mechanization
The National Agricultural Mechanization Policy is in place, alongside plans for a tractor assembly plant producing 2,000 to 4,000 tractors a year. Two thousand tractors have been deployed under the Renewed Hope Agricultural Mechanization Programme.
Fertilizer and input support
1.9 million bags of fertilizer have been distributed to nearly one million farmers. The Ministry also promotes organic fertilizer and trains fertilizer inspectors.
Rural infrastructure
Work includes 170 km of asphalt roads, 57 km of earth roads, 3,596 solar street lights, 296 boreholes, and rural housing and market facilities.
10-year agrifood system strategy (2026-2035)
The strategy follows the AU CAADP Kampala Declaration. It targets a 2.45% rise in agrifood output, a 50% cut in post-harvest losses, $100 billion in investment, and a tripling of intra-African trade.
Strategic focus
- Crop production, including rice, maize, wheat, sorghum, cassava, and cocoa
- Livestock and fisheries
- Mechanization and technology
- Value chains and agro-industrialisation
- Climate resilience and soil management
- Cooperative digitalisation
FDAE
Federal Department of Agricultural Extension
The Federal Department of Agricultural Extension (FDAE) was created in December 2012 as a department of the ministry. It leads, coordinates, and checks the quality of agricultural extension across Nigeria.
FDAE works with state and non-state actors in the National Agricultural Extension System so services reinforce each other, productivity rises, and livelihoods improve for farmers and other value-chain actors.
Mandate
Educate farmers, share improved technology, and support adoption along agricultural value chains, with attention to gender, so productivity can last.
Mission
Provide pluralistic, demand-driven extension and advisory services to farmers, including youth and women, and help them use resources for sustainable agriculture and livelihoods.
Vision
A national extension system that delivers efficiently to farmers and other value-chain actors, and raises agricultural productivity.
Divisions
Technology Innovation and Advisory Services
Links technology generation with adoption, demonstrates innovations, and connects agricultural value chains.
- Advisory services
- Technology and innovations
- Value chain linkages
Field Extension Services
Spreads appropriate technologies and builds farmer capacity through a range of extension methods.
- Public extension
- Private extension
- Quality assurance and control
Gender and Youth
Sensitises, mobilises, trains, and supports women, youth, and people with special needs in agricultural value chains.
- Gender mainstreaming and empowerment
- Youth in agriculture and agribusiness
- Women in agribusiness and vulnerable groups
e-Extension and Communication
Uses information and communication technology to carry extension messages, checks the quality of extension content, and manages knowledge.
- e-Extension
- Management information system
- Communication
Administrative Unit
Coordinates records, correspondence, personnel, meetings, and day-to-day office operations for the department. FDAE has 110 officers across the department and its projects.
FDAE
Partnerships
JICA: Smallholder Horticulture Empowerment and Promotion
SHEP is a market-oriented extension model from the Japan International Cooperation Agency. Farmers decide what to grow from market demand: grow to sell, rather than grow and then look for a buyer. After direct JICA support ended, FDAE set up a SHEP Unit. Activities now run in 18 states, with Kickstart International, Thrive Agric, and the World Food Programme, and the aim is to reach the remaining states.
National Electronic Extension Platform
NEEP is the national digital extension initiative that this site serves. FDAE and IFAD prepared a concept note and a joint action plan. The National Farmers Helpline Centre, run with NAERLS, is an existing digital extension asset the platform builds on.
ACReSAL and Precision Development: Digital Precision Agricultural Extension
The Digital Precision Agricultural Extension platform was developed under Agro-Climatic Resilience in Semi-Arid Landscapes, a World Bank project, to give farmers personalised advice through digital channels. FDAE staff joined development, review, validation, and the transition workshop, and are training to take the platform over.
GIZ and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation: Global Project Soil Matters
GPSM strengthens soil-health governance, soil information, and coordination for sustainable soil management. FDAE joined the national inception workshop and the work on stakeholder mapping and governance. The project is in implementation.
European Union-Nigeria Twinning Project
The twinning project works on food security and food systems through climate-smart technology and stronger value chains. FDAE has taken part in technical meetings on soil health, fertilizer, agrochemicals, and soil data. Those engagements are continuing.
WOFAN / ICON 2
FDAE worked with WOFAN under ICON 2 to support passage of the Agricultural Extension Service Bill before the National Assembly. Government, private, and civil-society actors met to agree advocacy and coordinated next steps.
GIZ Green Innovation Centre
GIZ ran this project with FDAE as the focal department, to raise smallholder productivity and the performance of micro, small, and medium enterprises. States and crops were Kaduna and Kano for maize, Oyo and Ogun for cassava, Benue and Nasarawa for rice, and Plateau for Irish potato. Outputs included good-practice and Farmer Business School manuals, reference manuals for the four value chains, a Hausa maize manual, 320 trainers, short courses, and a resource centre equipped for the department.
USAID Feed the Future
The project used a market-systems approach, partnering micro, small, and medium enterprises to deliver services, finance, and technical support. Value chains were maize, rice, soybean, cowpea, and aquaculture in Benue, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Kaduna, Kebbi, and Niger. More than 2.7 million farmers were reached through private extension providers. The work also documented 39 practices and profiled more than 300 private extension service providers.
Livelihood Improvement Family Enterprise
LIFE is a nationwide programme for women and youth in poor households. It adds value through small processing mills and factories for groundnut, palm oil, palm kernel, soybean, sesame, cassava, yam flour, coconut oil, banana, tomato, and cashew, and through cottage rice mills.
National Poverty Reduction with Growth Strategy
NPRGS (2021-2031) is a service-wide framework to reduce poverty, carried out across ministries. FDAE took part in implementation.
Youth Economic Intervention and De-Radicalization Programme
YEIDEP, under the Federal Ministry of Youth Development, addresses youth unemployment and exclusion through skills, entrepreneurship, and economic opportunity, with agriculture as one path. It covers the 36 states and the FCT. FDAE's work on innovation, training, and youth in agriculture is the department's link to the programme.
FDAE
How extension is delivered
Constituency projects
FDAE has facilitated and supervised federal constituency projects in agriculture. Farmers were trained and equipped with inputs and tools for production and processing across value chains.
One-stop extension centres
FDAE designed one-stop agricultural extension centres so farmers can reach advice, improved technology, inputs, mechanisation, finance, market information, value addition, and training in one place. The centres are planned as regional hubs in Nigeria's six geopolitical zones, linking research, extension, farmers, finance, and markets.