The Federal Government has launched Nigeria’s first satellite and artificial intelligence-powered national crop monitoring system to strengthen food security and improve agricultural planning across the country.
The initiative, unveiled through a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Ben Guerir, Morocco, is designed to provide real-time data on crop production, land use and emerging food security risks, enabling policymakers to make informed decisions.’
The agreement involves the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit (PFSCU), OCP Africa and geospatial technology firm Ground Truth Analytics. The system will initially be rolled out across 15 priority states before expanding nationwide.
Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (Office of the Vice President), Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, signed the agreement on behalf of the Federal Government while representing Vice President Kashim Shettima, who chairs the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit.
The signing also marked the official launch of the National Agro-Productivity System (NAPS), a platform that will provide both federal and state governments with AI-generated insights on crop yields, available farmland and potential food security threats across Nigeria.
The project is part of the Tinubu administration’s ongoing efforts to improve food production and address food security challenges following the declaration of a national emergency on food security in 2023.
Speaking at the event, Hadejia said Nigeria must focus on building local expertise to develop, manage and improve modern agricultural technologies rather than relying solely on imported solutions.
He explained that the use of artificial intelligence, geospatial technology and data-driven agriculture would improve seasonal planning, agricultural investments, productivity monitoring and policy coordination.
Executive Secretary of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit, Marion Moon, said the new system was created to solve the long-standing challenge of unreliable agricultural data by monitoring what farmers actually plant during each farming season.
She noted that access to real-time information would help government make better decisions on food reserves, imports and exports while reducing planning errors caused by inaccurate crop estimates.
According to Moon, the National Agro-Productivity System operates under the National Agribusiness Policy Mechanism and has already been tested in 13 states, covering approximately 250,000 farmers, more than 50,000 agricultural producers and over 2,000 communities while collecting more than one million agricultural data points.
Chief Executive Officer of OCP Africa, Alafifi Laadel, described the partnership as a long-term collaboration focused on knowledge transfer, institutional development and building Nigeria’s technological capacity.
Ground Truth Analytics CEO Driss Kitane demonstrated how the AI-powered platform automatically identifies farmland from satellite images, determines the crops being cultivated and monitors their growth without manual intervention. He added that the satellite images are updated every five days, allowing continuous monitoring throughout the farming season.
Kitane also assured that all agricultural data generated through the project will remain under Nigeria’s ownership and be stored securely on servers within the country.
The implementation will begin with a pilot programme in one state before expanding to three states and later to 15 priority states for comprehensive crop monitoring and agricultural intelligence.
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 government agencies attended the signing ceremony.
