“APPEALS” stands for Agro-Processing, Agricultural Productivity Enhancement and Livelihood Improvement Support, a Federal Government of Nigeria FGN-World Bank Assisted programme.

The development objective of the APPEALS Project for Nigeria is to enhance agricultural productivity of small and medium scale farmers and improve value addition along priority value chains in the participating states.

The project has five components.

(1) Production and productivity enhancement is to increase total supply of the targeted priority value chains with a purpose to ensure consistent, reliable and timely stream of produce to the markets.

(2) primary processing, value addition, post-harvest management and women and youth empowerment will support the reduction of post-harvest losses, facilitate the consolidation of produce and primary processing by farmers’ cooperative societies and small and medium-scale enterprises in project intervention areas, focusing on gender-sensitive activities along the core segment of the value chains (production, processing, marketing) and ancillary businesses (agro-dealership, haulage, packaging, business management, etc.);

(3) Infrastructure support to agri-business clusters aim at improving physical environment (last mile connection to roads and utilities) for agro-industrial and cottage processing units, located in agri-business clusters with significant potential for agro-processing and greater inclusion of small to medium size farmers into the agri-business supply chains through the business alliances;

(4) Technical assistance, knowledge management and communication is to build capacity of the project staff and partner in the relevant areas of the value chain development, harness the knowledge acquired and generated under the project.

(5) Project management and coordination is to ensure effective management and coordination of the project for proper accomplishment of project related goals and the achievement of the PDO.