Nigeria and other African countries are set to import food valued at $110 billion by 2025. This is according to the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA).
Its Director, Development and Delivery, Dr. Alfred Dixon who spoke in Abuja at the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between IITA and Nigeria Agribusiness Group (NABG) said the essence of the collaboration is to scale up on agricultural technology in the country.
Dr Dixon said so far Africa imports US $35 billion worth of food, warning that if nothing was done about this, by 2025, the continent will be importing $110 billion worth of food annually. The crisis between Russia and Ukraine would threaten the import and availability of not only wheat but soyabeans, fertilizer, potash and phosphate in the country.
Annual demand
The annual demand for wheat in Nigeria is about six million metric tons with the country importing 11% of it from the two countries. He also said between 40 and 50% of the soyabeans consumed in the country also comes from the two countries, including fertilizers, potash and phosphate. Prof Sanni said the current crisis and global recession has already caused scarcity of commodities which will lead to high prices and food insecurity.
He said: “The current crisis in the world either COVID-19, Ukraine/Russia crises and the global recession has already caused the scarcity of commodities, it has its ripple effect on high prices which affects food security, so the point is how to wrap up local production to some of the shortfalls.
“For instance we take about the 11 per cent of wheat from Russia and Ukraine together as a nation and our annual wheat demand is around six million, today CBN (Central Bank of Nigeria) has supported about 800,000 out of the number. For soyabeans, more than 40-50% comes from Ukraine and Russia, also includes fertilizers, potash and phosphate, so the essence is on how to wrap up production? IITA over the years has developed modern technology and practices that we can scale up, so interacting with Nigeria Agribusiness Group is to be able to work together and synergies actions, strategies to scale up and reach millions of small holder farmers. So the modalities will be ensuring the private sector takes up the interventions.”
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