Nigeria to Deploy AI and Satellite-Powered Crop Monitoring System
Nigeria has signed a memorandum of understanding with OCP Africa and geospatial technology company Ground Truth Analytics to launch the National Agro-Productivity System (NAPS), the country’s first national crop monitoring platform powered by satellite imagery and artificial intelligence.
The MoU was signed at Mohammed VI Polytechnic University in Ben Guerir, Morocco, by the Deputy Chief of Staff to the President, Senator Ibrahim Hassan Hadejia, on behalf of the Federal Government. The agreement was signed alongside OCP Africa, the agricultural solutions subsidiary of Morocco’s OCP Group, and Ground Truth Analytics, a company specialising in geospatial technologies.
What the National Agro-Productivity System Does
NAPS uses artificial intelligence algorithms to analyse satellite imagery updated every five days, automatically identifying individual farms, determining the crops planted, and monitoring crop growth throughout the season without manual intervention. The platform will provide federal and state governments with real-time data on crop yields, land availability, planting patterns, and food security risks, giving policymakers access to timely information for agricultural planning, investment, and policy coordination.
The system will be deployed in three phases, beginning with a pilot in one state before expanding to three states and ultimately covering 15 priority states. All data generated will be hosted on Nigerian servers, with access to sensitive data remaining entirely under Nigerian authority.
Closing a Long-Standing Information Gap
The initiative responds to a persistent weakness in Nigeria’s agricultural planning: the absence of reliable, in-season information on what farmers actually cultivate compared to what was initially projected. Inaccurate production estimates have historically led to poor policy decisions on food reserves, imports, and exports.
The framework under which NAPS operates was approved by the National Council on Agriculture and Food Security in November 2024 and has already been piloted across 13 states over three planting seasons, covering more than 250,000 farmers, surveying over 50,000 farmers in more than 2,000 communities, tracking five priority crops, and generating over one million agricultural data points.
Similar technology currently predicts Morocco’s national wheat production up to three months before harvest with between 90% and 95% accuracy, according to Ground Truth Analytics. Financial institutions already use the platform for farmer credit assessments, while agricultural cooperatives in Ghana use it to verify that beneficiaries cultivate the acreage declared when accessing loans.
Building on Existing Space-Based Agricultural Tools
NAPS extends Nigeria’s broader effort to modernise agriculture through digital and space-based technologies. Through the National Space Research and Development Agency (NASRDA), Nigeria launched CropWatch in 2024, a crop monitoring system using satellite data. The country further expanded its digital agriculture strategy in 2025 through the Innovative Agriculture project, developed in partnership with the European Space Agency, which provides smallholder farmers with information on soil quality, suitable crops, and planting schedules.
NAPS, however, represents a broader step forward. Where earlier initiatives primarily supported farmers directly, the new platform is aimed at policymakers, providing consolidated intelligence on agricultural production cycles to guide decisions on production, trade, and national food stock management.
A Partnership Built Around Knowledge Transfer
OCP Africa described the collaboration as a long-term investment in Nigeria’s agricultural future rather than a conventional procurement arrangement, with a focus on knowledge transfer, institutional strengthening, and local capacity development to ensure Nigeria builds sustainable expertise in digital agriculture.
The partnership comes three years after Nigeria declared a national emergency on food security following the economic reforms of July 2023, which triggered sharp increases in food prices across the country.