The Federal Government has launched Nigeria’s first satellite and artificial intelligence-powered national crop monitoring system to improve agricultural planning and verify domestic harvest volumes. 

The initiative, formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding signed in Ben Guerir, Morocco, introduces the National Agro-Productivity System (NAPS) to provide federal and state authorities with real-time data on crop production, available farmland, and emerging food security risks.

The agreement was executed at the Mohammed VI Polytechnic University by the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President (Office of the Vice President), Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, on behalf of Vice President Kashim Shettima, Chairman of the Presidential Food Systems Coordinating Unit (PFSCU). 

The system is a tri-party partnership between the PFSCU, Moroccan agricultural firm OCP Africa, and geospatial technology firm Ground Truth Analytics. 

Hadejia stated that the initiative focuses on building domestic institutional capacity and technical expertise through knowledge transfer, rather than relying solely on imported infrastructure.

The deployment of NAPS directly addresses the absence of reliable, in-season data on domestic crop cultivation, which has historically hindered national agricultural planning. 

Executive Secretary of the PFSCU, Marion Moon, explained that the platform uses satellite imaging to verify actual planting choices against farmers’ initial intentions, preventing inaccurate policy decisions regarding national food reserves, imports, and exports. 

Before the formal launch, the system underwent testing across 13 states over multiple planting cycles, tracking roughly 250,000 farmers and compiling over one million data points across five major food commodities.

The technical framework uses artificial intelligence to automatically delineate farm boundaries from satellite images and assess crop growth stages every five days without manual field input. 

Ground Truth Analytics Chief Executive Officer, Driss Kitane, noted that the predictive technology tracks harvests with up to 95 per cent accuracy and confirmed that all generated agricultural data will remain sovereign to Nigeria, hosted strictly on domestic servers. 

The rollout plan will begin with a single-state minimal product, expand to a detailed three-state crop intelligence model, and eventually cover 15 priority states before achieving full nationwide implementation.

Source: Real Broadcasting Network