Nigerian Government Uses POS Terminals to Monitor Farm Subsidies

Under the Growth Enhancement Support (GES) scheme that is headed by the Nigerian government, POS terminals will be integrated into the daily lives of the country’s farmers. The idea is to give farmers better access to fertilizers and other farming subsidies.

Cellulant Nigeria is providing the technology, and company leaders explained to Vanguard that whenever farmers get subsidized farm inputs, details of the transaction can now be stored in the POS terminals and later transferred to the central database of the scheme. All of this will be managed by Cellulant Nigeria.

Nigeria Team GES (Cellulant) Chief of Party Bolaji Akinboro told the news source that this addition of technology will help capture data that could have either been lost or taken time to reconcile.

“These POS terminals allow us to solve the problem of capturing all categories of redemption (farmer with phone/farmer without phone/no network) as they are happening from the side of the agro-dealer,” Akinboro told the news source. “The agro-dealer himself becomes an additional source of data into the platform via the POS.”

The essential idea of GES is to increase farmers’ access to subsidized farm inputs such as fertilizers and improved seedlings, through the private sector. The scheme was designed as part of Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda (ATA).

According to an article in This Day Live, at least 300,000 farmers are to benefit from the GES program in the Nigerian city Sokoto this year. State Commissioner of Agriculture Arzika Tureta explained that this new program would entail issuance of identity cards, which contain all the data of registered farmers in the state.

“The state government is committed to the welfare of farmers and has already made arrangements for early distribution of fertilizer to farmers in the state,” Tureta reportedly said during an interview in his office in Sokoto. Additionally, he called on farmers in the state to redouble efforts to ensure bumper harvest this year.

Akinboro further explained that the new GES scheme allows the country to achieve faster reconciliation and problem resolution as it can trace and compare POS data along with transactions from farmer phone, register, RC& SL form.

The actual POS will be issued to agro-dealers at no cost by commercial banks and the agro-dealers via Cellulant are responsible for maintenance and safekeeping of the POS, he stated to the news source.