In August 2018, Nigeria’s National Universities Commission (NUC) appointed MSU’s AFRE as its external consultants on Agriculture. The appointment was announced at a meeting between MSU’s AFRE led by Prof. Titus Awokuse (with MSU Faculty Prof. Tom Reardon, Prof. Saweda Liverpool-Tasie and Dr. Oyinkan Tasie) and an NUC management team comprising the Executive Secretary (Head of the organization), Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed, FNAL, the Chairman of the Board, Emeritus Prof. Ayo Banjo, FNAL and several Directors.

The NUC is the primary regulatory agency for the Nigerian University System, with over 164 Universities including 42 Federal, 47 State and 75 Private Universities. The twelve Directorates of the NUC include Academic Planning; Research, Innovations & Information Technology; and Accreditation. With AFRE’s appointment, MSU Faculty will support the Nigerian University System through the NUC with curriculum design and reform for education in agriculture in the country. MSU will also support capacity strengthening for Nigerian Faculty, Researchers and Scholars.

This is a scale up of MSU’s ongoing capacity strengthening efforts through collaborative research on aquaculture, fishery, poultry value chains, land access and conflict themes (led by Drs. Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, Tom Reardon, Laura Schmidt-Olabisi, Oyinkan Tasie and  Vincenzina Caputo) under USAID’s Feed the Future Nigeria Agricultural Policy Project. Dr. Saweda Liverpool-Tasie, an Associate Professor of MSU’s AFRE is the Principal Investigator of this USAID Funded Project.