Kano Dairy Stakeholders Commends Outspan’s Investments in Backward Integration

Dike Onwuamaeze

Stakeholders in the Kano’s dairy sector have commended the backward integration programmes embarked upon by Outspan Nigeria Limited, to stimulate growth, generating valuable employment opportunities and tackle long-standing issues in the sector.

Speaking recently, a Veterinary Doctor and a Dairy Consultant, Dr. Suleiman Musa Suleiman, revealed that Outspan Nigeria has been providing solutions to various challenges in the agro value chain by making investments that had been bringing milk collection centres (MCC) closer to the dairy farmers in the different clusters.

Suleiman said: “I happened to be part of the beginning of this whole partnership between Outspan Nigeria Limited and the Kano Dairy & Livestock Husbandry Cooperative Union (KADALCU); I even partook in the MoU signing process.

“To be honest with you, I am impressed. I am impressed in the sense that they made a promise, and they are fulfilling it. We have not had to start running after them to perform what they promised.”

He added: “We started with the challenges of milk collection; they have addressed the challenges by providing a number of milk collection centres (MCC) and a modern bulking centre that is well equipped with modern facilities, including solar-powered energy solution, which is good for rural, remote areas that are typical of a dairy settlement.”

He said that Outspan’s intervention programmes are helping smallholder dairy farmers to address wastage, which had consistently hampered output, adding that it also “conducts training for the farmers to bring them up to speed with useful modern dairy farming techniques.”

 Speaking in the same vein, the Chairman of the Kano Dairy and Livestock Husbandry Cooperative Union (KADALCU), Mr. Usman Abdullahi Usman, said that “one of the goals of the union is to generate direct and indirect employment opportunities for the youth. With the intervention of Outspan Nigeria Limited, we have been able to secure motorbikes and tricycles, which have been issued out to the youth vendors to go to the Fulani clusters and collect the milk for processing at the milk collection centres.”

Currently, Outspan has four MCCs located close to the smallholder dairy farmers in Kano state, which are equipped with adequate cooling systems that are powered by off-grid equipment.

Speaking recently at the commissioning of a newly procured cold truck for its MCCs, the Vice President of OFI Dairy in Nigeria, Mr. Paulsamy Praveen, said: “We prioritise the actualisation of the federal government’s economic development agenda, especially, in the dairy sector. The current value chain development initiatives, especially, the ‘Milk Mission,’ encapsulate our absolute commitment to raising the productivity level in the dairy sector while engendering a performance scale that would push the sector towards fulfilling its economic contributory potential.”