Nigeria's Federal Government has begun distributing 2,000 tractors and more than 9,000 farming implements nationwide under the Renewed Hope National Agricultural Mechanisation Programme (RHAMP), which Minister of Agriculture and Food Security Abubakar Kyari has described as the largest mechanisation drive on the continent. Rather than handing tractors directly to individual farmers, the equipment is being deployed through certified Mechanisation Service Providers under a lease-to-own model, with each tractor expected to service around 600 hectares annually and reach more than one million farmers.
The rollout is being phased, starting with 600 tractors and followed by batches of 750 and 650 units, after more than 100,000 applications were received for the first phase alone. Kyari noted that Nigeria's current tractor density, about 0.27 per 100 square kilometres, sits far below both the African average of 2.5 and the global benchmark of 3, underscoring the scale of the gap the programme is designed to close. The initiative pairs equipment deployment with structured financing, mobile service trucks and dedicated mechanisation centres intended to keep tractors running rather than idle once they need repair.
