Farmers across the Niger Delta are set to gain greater access to certified seeds and quality planting materials following a two-year partnership between the National Agricultural Seed Council (NASC) and the Foundation for Partnership Initiatives in the Niger Delta (PIND).

The organisations signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) at NASC’s corporate headquarters in Abuja to expand community-based seed production, strengthen certification and inspection, develop local seed enterprises and mobilise investment in Nigeria’s domestic seed industry.

The partnership combines NASC’s regulatory and quality-assurance mandate with PIND’s market systems expertise and networks of Community Seed Entrepreneurs, Farm Service Providers, Business Service Providers, research institutions and private-sector partners.

Speaking at the signing ceremony, NASC Director-General, Fatuhu Muhammed, said the agreement would help bring quality-assurance services closer to farmers and seed producers.

“A productive agricultural sector begins with quality seeds. By working with PIND and its networks across the Niger Delta, NASC can extend certification and inspection services to more communities, protect farmers from poor-quality planting materials and create stronger pathways for investment in Nigeria’s seed industry,” Mr Muhammed said.

PIND’s Executive Director, Sam Daibo, said the partnership would help move proven community-level interventions to institutional adoption and scale.

“Many farmers understand the value of quality seeds but cannot access certified planting materials when and where they need them. By combining NASC’s regulatory leadership with PIND’s market systems experience, we can close that gap, strengthen local seed enterprises and help farmers build more productive and commercially viable livelihoods,” Mr Daibo said.

From cassava to other crops

The MoU formalises a collaboration dating back to 2016 through the Building an Economically Sustainable Seed System for Cassava programme, implemented in partnership with the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and the National Root Crops Research Institute (NRCRI).

The collaboration later expanded into community-based cassava seed multiplication, with NASC certifying seed plots across the Niger Delta.

Under the new framework, NASC and PIND will expand NASC-certified community seed multiplication across the region.

NASC will lead certification and quality assurance, while PIND will support enterprise development, technical assistance and market linkages.

According to the statement, the partners will also extend NASC’s Licensed Seed Inspectors Scheme into the Niger Delta, drawing potential candidates from PIND’s Farm Service Provider and Business Service Provider networks.

The partnership will further promote domestic seed production for high-demand vegetables, including tomato, pepper and cucumber, while expanding access to cassava, banana and yam planting materials produced through NASC’s PROSSIVA programme, the statement said.

It said the agreement will also support the Mastercard Foundation-funded WISE programme by enabling NASC to certify Community Seed Entrepreneurs trained to supply quality cassava planting materials to women producers across the Niger Delta.

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The partnership’s first major joint deliverable will be the Nigeria Seed Systems Forum 2026 in Abuja.

The forum is expected to bring together policymakers, regulators, researchers, investors, seed companies, development partners and farmers to advance policy, investment and market action in Nigeria’s seed sector.

A Joint Technical Working Group comprising representatives of NASC and PIND will coordinate implementation and track progress under the agreement.

Through the partnership, the organisations aim to strengthen the connection between regulation, research, enterprise development and markets, bringing certified seeds closer to farmers while supporting a stronger and more commercially sustainable seed industry in Nigeria.

Mecka AI, a startup that collects and analyzes human motion data to train humanoid robots and other robotics, is nearing a new round led by Sequoia Capital at a valuation of about $500 million, according to two people with knowledge of the deal.

The new financing comes just three months after Mecka announced that it raised $60 million in a round led by Framework Ventures that included participation from Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, and Kindred Ventures.

TechCrunch has not learned the precise size of the new round. The terms of the deal are not final and could still change.

Mecka AI didn’t respond to a request for comment. Sequoia declined to comment.

Mecka AI was co-founded in 2024 by four entrepreneurs, including Canadians Josh Gao and Mogen Cheng, who previously built a restaurant fintech startup, and Jason Chong, who joined Coinbase after it acquired his crypto exchange. Duy Nguyen, the only non-Canadian on the team, focuses on operations at Mecka.

The four co-founders don’t have backgrounds in robotics. But they did recognize that there was a dearth of physical-world data and realized that capturing real-world interactions was the primary bottleneck holding back general-purpose robots, including humanoids.

Mecka, which derives its name from “mecha,” a fictional giant robot controlled by humans, set out to do for robotics what Scale AI, Mercor, Surge, and other human data companies have done for LLMs. The startup pays people to record themselves performing everyday tasks — like making coffee or fixing cars — using body sensors and smartphones.

As of early June, Mecka was projecting that it would end 2026 at an annual run rate of $100 million, Gao told Fortune when the startup announced its previous fundraise.

While Mecka AI hasn’t publicly disclosed its customer list, many robotics companies and AI labs rely on real-world data captured through this “egocentric” approach, alongside other physical data collection methods like teleoperation, to build their models.

Other startups collecting real-world data for robot training include XDOF, which TechCrunch reported last week was nearing a new round at a $1.2 billion valuation, as well as human-data platforms expanding beyond LLMs, such as Scale AI and Micro1.