Nigeria, Jan. 26 -- Kachia, a local government headquarters in the southern part of Kaduna State in northern Nigeria, is a centre of the ginger trade. Middlemen and traders often arrived in their vehicles to buy the root crop from peasant farmers in the area before a massive shock disrupted the trade in 2023.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how ginger farmers in Kachia and other parts of Kaduna lost an estimated N12 billion to a fungal disease epidemic that destroyed their ginger crops.

The federal government, led by President Bola Tinubu, responded to the disaster by establishing a N1.6 billion Ginger Recovery Advancement and Transformation for Economic Empowerment (GRATE) fund to enable the farmers to participate in the new planting season.

T...