On November 1-2, Olusegun Obasanjo, the former president, Dapo Abiodun, the governor of Ogun State, and other dignitaries will attend the launch of the Platform for African Women in Smart Climate Agriculture (PAWISCA) in Abeokuta, Ogun State.
At a recent briefing in Lagos announcing the launch of the Foundation and its areas of concentration across the federation, Bishop (Mrs) Bola Oyegbami, the Nigerian representative of the US-based Foundation, made this statement.
She claims that the organization's goal is to stop the social and economic downturn by implementing a constructive innovation for the mobilisation of human and material resources for widespread employment and engagement for jobs and wealth possibilities for enhanced quality of life for people.
She identified water technology, and agriculture with support to access major markets and export, sanitation, and financial services as major projects of the organisation in Nigeria.
Oyegbami said: “In PAWISCA, we have four major projects and Lagos State is a pilot project for all other States to replicate. The first one is water technology. In water technology, we are going to take our water from the Atlantic Ocean. This is salty water but we are doing something similar to what is in operation in Dubai. In the Atlantic ocean now, the process by which you can remove the salt is by desalination. This is what we are going to do. But the plant and machinery we are going to use will come all the way from the United States of America.
“In our agricultural and agribusiness value chain project plan, we wish to, through our policy programme on quality assurance/quality control value chain and total quality organic agro and allied products, hope to produce goods of high quality in our integrated value-chain agro-industrial part that will meet the international standard under a competitive free market economy.”
Oyegbami, who stated the Foundation’s project will be replicated across the country with a pilot scheme taking off in Lagos State, pleaded with State Governments to cooperate with the organisation through approval for land for their projects as they vigorously aim to lift rural women and girl child out of poverty and misery many women are currently battling with.