From farm to factory, to fork to fashion, there are investment opportunities in Nigeria’s agricultural value chain. To be sure, the future of global food security is in unfarmed African lands.Agriculture is the linchpin of Nigeria’s economy. Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), at The New World Nigeria investment summit in London, said the sector accounts for 40 percent of GDP and 60 percent of employment – one-half of jobs created in Nigeria between 2001 and 2007 were from agriculture.
Farming may not bring fame, like the movie and music industry, but it promises a fortune – “from $99 billion today to $256 billion by 2030.” Fixation with oil has cost Nigeria its dominant position as an exporter of cocoa, groundnut and palm; our global share of these outputs shrunk to 5 percent as at 2000. Meanwhile, Nigeria’s annual total food import bill is $4.2 billion, spent on importing wheat, fish, rice and sugar.
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