By Daniel Tyokua
The Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Hello Tractor, Mr. Folu Okunade has launched seven hundred thousand tractors for cultivatable land available in the nation’s capital, Abuja.
At the launch recently, Okunade said the first launch was in Nasarawa State, adding that, with the launching in Abuja it has made it 5th hub in Africa, with Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria
He, said Hello Tractor started in Nigeria in 2014, and since then has now reached five countries with the technology which is being used in eighteen (18) countries of Africa.
Okunade made this assertion at the launch of Hello Tractor’s Abuja Mechanization Hub in partnership with Heifer International, at Gwako, in Gwagwalada area council.
He said, “we have impacted more than a million famers, and we have being able to mechanized more three hundred million hectares of land across Africa, and we will continue to do more”
Okunade noted that, the importance of the hub is to connect farmers that need mechanization and tractor owners that have tractor that are looking for more farmers to service.
“We want to see farmers producing more, selling more and earning more income from what they sell, so, in the next five years we need to extend to these five countries that we are in, we expect our technology to be all in every single county in Africa that people will have ability to access Mechanization even without owing a tractor, because these are the area I have earlier mentioned that, Nigeria alone need seven hundred thousand tractors for cultivatable available land in Nigeria, because, Hello Tractor can not do it alone, so we need partners and other people to join us in this effort, so many countries including Nigeria have the need for Mechanization” he stated.
On his part, the Country Director of Heifer International, Dr Lekan Tobe affirmed that, Hello Tractor Mechanization Hub Project, focusses on training in-demand skill to Nigeria youth and matching them to employment opportunities in agriculture.
In his remarks the Director, Mechanization, federal ministry of Agriculture, Engineer Sule O. Mageed, represented by the Deputy Director, Engineering and Mechanization, John T. Drai, said in order to boost agricultural production and to have food sufficiency in the country, which President Bola Tinubu through the federal ministry of Agriculture and Food security had procured over 4,000 units of tractor (John Deere, Belarus and Case Tractors) as well as combine harvesters and are about arriving in the country.
