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China, India, Indonesia, Thailand and a host of other Asian countries with large populations produce enough grains like rice for local consumption and ship the rest – perhaps of doubtful quality, to Africa, with Nigeria as the main destination. The government of the day and in the past appear just satisfied with this situation. Otherwise, how could one explain that in a country with a population of 200+ million, nearly 1 million square kilometres of land, almost half of it cultivable, arable land would depend on larger populations to supply it its food needs?
Beginning from the period of one’s childhood when Operation Feed the Nation (OFN as it was then called) turned into a sort of nursery rhyme to the Green Revolution era, Nigeria has travelled a long, wieldy and unyielding distance towards feeding its population. It is rather painful that nobody can account for this serial failure except to blame corruption. How long can we maintain this trajectory of catering only to our patronizing and transactional system?
The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition formed in 2012 and driven by the G8 targeted to lift 50 million Africans out of poverty by 2022. The 10-year programme ended last year recording absolute failure. The so-called alliance between African leaders and G8 aimed at accelerating investment in agriculture did not lift anyone out of poverty. It has been said repeatedly at various fora that Africa can feed its populations.
Africa is an important destination market for the export of foods and other finished products from developed countries with over a trillion dollar bill. It is illogical to expect these same G8 countries to fund your self-reliance in food production. Even the best morally-driven philanthropy would not destroy its own market and source of revenue.
The AfDB’s investment of US$520 in a Special Agro-industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) in Nigeria should be driven by an urgent need to start reversing the colossal amount being spent on food alone. This could be seen as an emergency intervention in the face of food shortages worldwide. This investment is targeted and has the sufficient commitment of the investing entities. The component commitment of the Nigerian
Import Bill
At about US$50 billion, it is estimated that the African continent’s food import bill could rise to US$110 billion in the next 7 years. Nigeria’s actual food import bill varies from various sources. Bloomberg puts Africa’s current 100 million metric tons of cereal import bill at US$75 billion while projecting an annual loan of US$ 65 billion to curb the high import bill. Some sources put Nigeria’s food import bill at US$22 billion and US$20 billion while CBN put the figure at N1.2trillion or US$2.71billion. Whichever is correct, the high import bill for consumption is unsustainable and requires an urgent and Marshall-like plan to save the economy and feed the growing population.
On the other hand, while food imports are rising, capital importation to agriculture fell to worse levels in 5 years by 2022.
How to reconfigure investment in agriculture
From the military rule era to the intervening years of civilian federal governments and now to full-blown civil rule, policy inconsistency, and corruption leading to the diversion of incentives and insufficient investment and oversight have robbed the country of the attainment of food sufficiency. For maximum impact, the incentivizing modalities need to be revised to focus more on large-scale farmers while still supporting smallholder farmers. This could be the game changer because up till now every government’s agricultural and farming incentive has targeted small farmers. However, their combined output has always fallen short of meeting the targets required to attain food self-reliance.
For large-scale farmers, it is easy to track investments and tally them with results while the prevailing emphasis is on supporting the small-holders from farm to market. In this scenario, the overall objective of attaining high food production is subsumed by the sentiment of not allowing the small farmers to lose their output either to the vagaries of weather, poor harvest, and distribution loss.
Of the nearly N200 billion Credit Risk Guarantee (CRG) NIRSAL exposure to the agricultural sector, only a small fraction is viable owing to the obviously large targeting of smallholder farmers. Certainly, it is absolutely imperative for the federal government to organize and fund small-holder farmers, agriculture cooperatives and the small and medium-scale agro-allied industries in the value chain. However, inputs in this area have in the long-term not matched output. The reason for the poor performance is that they are not enabled to upscale their output, but to aid corruption and diversion of funds by the agencies
Unlike the large-scale agriculture investors, the small-holder farmers and cooperatives almost beg their way into being included in these portfolio disbursements and thus, are weak to negotiate firmly for the right loans or grants and conditions. It is almost perceived as a share of the national cake and lacks the full evaluation and profiling that ought to go into each of these small groups.
The Bank of Agriculture, Bank of Industry, Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending and other special purpose agencies for the agricultural sector may consider a review of their support and lending template if the nation is to pull out of food import dependency.
Proposal for viable investment targets
Aside from the Special Agro-industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) launched by AfDB in the last quarter of 2022, other special interventions by the federal and state governments are required.
Universities of Agriculture in Nigeria are currently academic institutions for the award of degrees. This should change to be predominantly research institutions and training grounds for agriculture entrepreneurs, innovators and agriculture academicians. There are currently about 10 federal institutions dedicated to agriculture. College of Agriculture, Jos; Federal College of Agriculture, Ibadan; Federal College of Agriculture, Ishiagu Federal College of Animal Health and Production Technology, Vom. Others include the Federal College of Fisheries and Marine Technology, Federal College of Forestry, Jos; the Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta; Michael Okpara the University of Agriculture; The Federal College of Agriculture, Akure and the Federal University of Agriculture, Makurdi.
There are dozens more federal and state universities offering agriculture as an academic course. It would be wrong for the university authorities to accredit a university for the purpose of awarding certificates only. The 21st Century conditions demand that graduates leave school to set up or work for establishments and start adding value to the economic system. The framework for this should take as exemplars, the universities of agriculture and the proposed real farm settlement environment.
Acquisition of farmland, technology systems
A minimum of 20 hectares of land must be acquired by all universities of agriculture and the necessary technology deployed. They should not only serve as practical preparatory farms but as profitable ventures run professionally. The difference from other farm ventures is that they are attached to universities for hands-on training of agricultural entrepreneurs. Dozens of other universities that offer agriculture as a course should make use of these farmlands in their catchment areas as extension studies. Students should be acquainted with modern technologies. Biotechnology students should also collaborate with these institutions to integrate practical knowledge of synthetic biology ecosystems into their curriculum. These farmlands need not buy non-essential tools. Tractors for harvesting and tilling the soil if purchased may be rented out to small farm-holders in the community of agriculture universities for more impact.
Upgraded Curriculum
The curriculum of agriculture universities should be aimed at making entrepreneurs, academics and innovators in this field. They can be well organized to attract foreign funding aside from government and local finance. Alongside this, a grading system oriented towards agricultural innovation may be developed by the universities so that before graduation and youth service, the best graduates are ready for the market in terms of their marketable and implementable solutions.
The work rate and grading component for agriculture university students should include the number of successful smallholder farmers they have helped with their knowledge.
Consistent awareness of the skills-oriented school curriculum should naturally attract the utmost attention worldwide so that students would already be armed with the knowledge of preparing their own business plans and can attract funding as undergrads. The principle of cooperation between departments and among students should be the basis of the academic community. For instance, an agricultural entrepreneur could expose his plan to an accounting/finance student to get appropriate financial modelling for his business.
The Heifer exemplar
Heifer Nigeria is aiming to support “one million families, predominately women and youths, to reach a sustainable living income by 2030”. The multinational is investing in “priority value chains critical to the country’s food security, leveraging innovation and emerging agricultural technologies to reach impact at transformational scales”. The program components reach out to all stakeholders in the agricultural value chain. However, its activities are heavily inclined to run along the smallholder farmers which for a long has not produced the right results. At best, it can only support the subsistence of its target groups. Heifer and similar portfolio investors can expand to embrace large-scale farmers in their investments to achieve significant results. The school programs enunciated in this piece can serve as incubator hubs for agricultural entrepreneurs.
We can start making our systems work for this and the next generation!