Nigerian agricultural sector on right track – MD Afrocet

What does Agra Innovate stands for?Agra Innovate is a project that will bring Nigerian policy makers, farmers and investors in food businesses together with the best of the international agribusiness technology and investment community, to look at how new innovations, new technologies, new seeds, new ideas and new methods can be brought into play to […]

What does Agra Innovate stands for?
Agra Innovate is a project that will bring Nigerian policy makers, farmers and investors in food businesses together with the best of the international agribusiness technology and investment community, to look at how new innovations, new technologies, new seeds, new ideas and new methods can be brought into play to positively stimulate the Nigerian agricultural sector. We hope to see a scenario where ideas will be merged to arrive at a conclusion that will ensure collaboration between the different forces to pull Nigeria back to what we know it can be and what it were back in the days. Therefore, we are bringing investors and technology providers from outside and within Nigeria. We are also bringing people from the entire range of the value chain and also we are bringing donors such as the Gate’s Foundation which has been playing a major role in the groundnut sector; there are the DFID who are organizing this rice fair.
Why did you pick Nigeria?
Because it seems to be a big opportunity, it has in recent years become a leading advocate in agriculture. However, Nigeria got the scale. It got the space, it got the industrialists and I believe there are several rice companies that have come on board only in recent years. We have seen the opportunity of working with Nigeria in reviving the agricultural sector.
Agra Innovate is constructed around issues critical to the sustained reform and reinvigoration of the Nigerian agricultural sector: the evolving policy framework, the current banking and lending environment, the development and application of innovative technologies and partnership models, improvements in communication, education, infrastructure, market access and the identification of investment opportunities and areas of future growth across key value chains. We hope it will be a catalyst that will ensure that the agricultural sector moves at the right direction.
What do you think are the major challenges faced by farmers in Nigeria?
They are numerous, but some of these challenges have been positively approached; the pressing ones are getting good markets, getting good prices. Let me say here that the study I have seen recently on groundnuts which will also be released publicly shows that many of the small scale farmers are hardly making a living. Because their seed quality is poor, mechanisation is poor; the groundnut oil extractors they use are less than 50% effective. This has rendered them operating at losses, wasting more than half of what they were supposed to be extracting and that is why Agra Innovate will provide a concentrated community of policy makers, agribusiness leaders, technologists and investors with an environment where knowledge sharing, technology transfer and the development of new partnerships and business networks will take place.
How would you rate the Nigerian agricultural sector?
The Nigerian agricultural sector is indeed moving at the right direction. Look at all these rice producers; they are all domestic rice producers and Afrocet believes that Nigeria needs not to import any. However, there is the need to tell the world that Nigeria has come of age agriculturally and that is a fact.