The Federal Government has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Morocco-based partners to deploy a satellite- and artificial intelligence-powered agricultural monitoring platform aimed at strengthening food security and providing real-time data on crop production, land use and agricultural performance across 15 priority states.
The agreement was signed on Friday at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco, by the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (Office of the Vice President), Senator Ibrahim Hadejia, on behalf of the Federal Government. Representatives of OCP Africa and geospatial technology firm Ground Truth Analytics also signed the agreement.
According to a statement issued on Saturday by the Technical Assistant on Agriculture to the President (Office of the Vice President), Marion Moon, Hadejia represented Vice President Kashim Shettima, Chairman of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit (PFSCU), at the signing ceremony.
The agreement formally launched Nigeria’s National Agro-Productivity System (NAPS), the country’s first satellite-powered national crop monitoring platform designed to provide the Federal and State Governments with real-time, AI-generated intelligence on crop yields, land availability, production performance and emerging food security risks.
Speaking at the ceremony, Hadejia said Nigeria must not only adopt emerging agricultural technologies but also develop the capacity to improve and adapt them to the country’s unique agricultural needs.
“The problems we face should not define the limits of our ambition. They should inspire us to develop the technologies, institutions and capabilities required to overcome them,” he said.
He noted that the platform would strengthen seasonal planning, agricultural investment, productivity monitoring and policy coordination by providing timely, reliable and actionable agricultural intelligence to support better decision-making.
According to him, the government’s vision goes beyond deploying technology to building local expertise through knowledge transfer, institutional capacity development and continuous learning.
Earlier, Marion Moon, who also serves as Executive Secretary of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit, said the National Agro-Productivity System was created to bridge the information gap between projected crop production and actual harvests.
She explained that real-time monitoring would enable government to accurately track crop planting, predict harvest outcomes and make informed decisions on food reserves, imports and exports.
Moon said the system operates under the National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism (NAPM), a four-pillar framework built around domestic production, food reserves, imports and exports.
Approved by the National Council on Agriculture and Food Security in November 2024, the framework has already been piloted across 13 states, reaching 250,000 farmers, surveying more than 50,000 farmers, covering over 2,000 communities, monitoring five major commodities, and generating more than one million data points.
Chief Executive Officer of OCP Africa, Alafifi Laadel, described the agreement as a long-term partnership focused on knowledge transfer, local capacity development and institutional strengthening.
She said the initiative would equip Nigeria not only to deploy advanced agricultural technologies but also to continually improve and sustain them.
Chief Executive Officer of Ground Truth Analytics, Driss Kitane, demonstrated how the AI-powered platform automatically analyses satellite imagery to identify farmland, detect crop types and monitor crop growth without manual intervention.
According to him, the technology refreshes satellite imagery every five days and can predict crop production up to three months before harvest with 90 to 95 per cent accuracy, while supporting governments, financial institutions and agricultural cooperatives with reliable data for planning and decision-making.
Kitane also assured that all data generated under the project would remain Nigeria’s sovereign property and would be hosted on servers located within the country.
He said implementation would begin with a pilot in one state before expanding to three states and eventually providing comprehensive multi-season crop monitoring across 15 priority states.
Receiving the Nigerian delegation, President and Director General of Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Hicham El Habti, disclosed that Nigerian students account for about 60 per cent of the institution’s student population, adding that its medical school now operates entirely in English.
The agreement comes three years after President Bola Tinubu declared a state of emergency on food security in July 2023 following rising food prices and mounting concerns over agricultural productivity.
The Federal Government delegation included officials from the Office of the Vice President, the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, the Federal Ministry of Justice, the National Space Research and Development Agency, the Nigeria Governors’ Forum and other agencies supporting the implementation of the National Agro-Productivity System.
