By Our Correspondent GORA, Nasarawa
On a stretch of land along the Keffi–Abuja Expressway, an agribusiness experiment is quietly challenging two of Nigeria’s most stubborn problems: unemployment and food scarcity.
CSS Global Integrated Farms says it has trained more than 8,000 unemployed youths across the country since its establishment, turning agriculture into a pipeline for jobs, skills and small-scale enterprise, not just subsistence.
The disclosure came on Tuesday, January 20, 2026, as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of CSS Global Integrated Farms, Professor John Kennedy Opara, commissioned a new hatchery and soap factory at the company’s Gora facility in Nasarawa State.
Speaking to journalists at the event, Opara described the training programme as a deliberate response to Nigeria’s intersecting crises of food insecurity and youth unemployment.
“So far, I have trained more than 8,000 unemployed youths,” he said. “The results we are seeing from Bauchi, Oyo and several other states are encouraging. Many of these young people are now running their own businesses and even training others.”
CSS Integrated Farms, according to Opara, is designed as a fully integrated agribusiness ecosystem, one where production, processing and skills transfer happen side by side.
The newly commissioned hatchery and soap factory expands that model, ensuring that outputs and by-products are fully utilised.
Waste, he said, is treated not as a loss but as raw material for another value chain.
The vision, Opara explained, was born out of necessity.
“My focus was to address food scarcity in this country and also tackle insecurity by gainfully employing young men,” he said. “This farm provides opportunities for over 1,400 workers. I strongly believe that the more people you employ, empower and engage, the more you reduce security challenges and bring food scarcity to the barest minimum.”
The former Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Christian Pilgrim Commission (NCPC) framed the farm not just as a business, but as a social stabiliser, one that converts idle labour into productive capacity.
The commissioning ceremony drew attention beyond Nigeria’s borders.
Former President of Sierra Leone, Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma, who inaugurated the hatchery, described CSS Integrated Farms as a model Africa needs to replicate not export its youth away from.
“We should be doing more of this within the African context than sending our young people out of the continent,” Koroma said. “We should utilise everything that is produced here. The good thing about CSS is that nothing is wasted every by-product is converted into another product.”
Koroma argued that Africa’s development challenge is no longer about potential, but execution.
“The CSS group represents the building blocks we require to build not only Nigeria, but the entire ECOWAS region,” he said. “Natural resources and land alone will not solve our problems. What we need is what we are seeing here, human capacity, management skills, and deliberate training.”
Adding an international development perspective, United Nations Ambassador Philbert Abaka Johnson urged governments to actively support such private-sector-led industrial initiatives.
“This is an inspiring example of industrialization on the continent,” Johnson said. “It is driven by passion, knowledge and vision. But for it to scale and deliver its full impact, it requires broad institutional support.”
He noted that initiatives like CSS Integrated Farms align directly with Africa’s employment and food security priorities, especially for young people seeking alternatives to migration and joblessness.
As Nigeria grapples with rising food prices and a growing youth population, CSS Global Integrated Farms is positioning itself as proof that agriculture, when treated as industry rather than charity can deliver jobs, skills and stability.
From hatcheries to soap factories, and from training centres to independent startups, the operation in Gora suggests a different narrative: farming not as survival, but as strategy.
For thousands of young Nigerians already trained, that shift has moved agriculture from the margins to the mainstream of opportunity.
