Nigeria’s agriculture sector is being held back by fragmented policies and weak infrastructure, limiting productivity and the sector’s contribution to economic growth.
Ade Adefeko, director of corporate and regulatory affairs at Olam Agric, who made this known in a recent interview with WebTV Nigeria, stressed that the sector remains underperforming because interventions are not harmonised and key enablers such as roads, cold chains, and power are inadequate.
‘We need to have a proper long-term plan and we should shy away from ad-hocism.’ ‘The problem in Nigeria is that we do too many things on an ad-hoc basis instead of being long-term with regards to our planning, our agribusiness financing.’
According to him, the country needs to have an integrated approach. ‘Government parastatals need to work together, while the private sector will do its bit; the government’s policy must be consistent and long-term,’ he said.
Adefeko emphasised that while Nigeria excels at primary crop production, infrastructure deficits at critical nodes of the value chain prevent local commodities from achieving higher commercial value.
‘We need to invest across the value chain like storage, processing, logistics, and distribution,’ Adefeko noted.
‘We are a large producer of many things like yam, cassava, sweet potato. But taking it to that next level, to the industrial level, has been a challenge for us, and that’s something we need to address,’ he added.
Addressing national concerns around food supply, Adefeko argued that Nigeria’s core challenge is not merely basic food production capacity, but rather the logistical challenge involved in moving food from rural farms to consumption hubs.
‘For me, I don’t think we have a problem of food security; I think the problem we have is that of food sovereignty,’ he noted.
‘We need to invest more in the area of logistics to be able to move agricultural products from the farm to the farm gate. Logistics is critical,’ he advised.
To bridge these gaps, Adefeko urged the Federal Government to eliminate policy flip-flops by re-establishing 5-to-10-year rolling development plans, partnering closely with organised private sector groups, and investing heavily in agricultural research institutes to boost crop yields for smallholder farmer cooperatives.