7:14:00 AM
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.
Fresh graduates, at home and overseas, deterred by associating agriculture with the soiled hands, hoes and cutlasses, need a broader view of the sector. From the supply of inputs like seeds, fertilisers to trading and retailing, agriculture offers jobs in research, market intelligence, communication, and so on.
In a 2008 Wall Street Journal interview, Sunny Verghese, CEO of Olam, said that his company’s challenge and its future depend on recruiting and retaining people with the right skills and mindset; people ready to “dirty their hands in the field and adapt to difficult living and working condition in emerging markets.”
Olam, a logistics and commodities trading company, is hiring Nigerians with MBAs to distil the lopsided flow of information that drives the value chain and investing in farms and consumable products.
Retail business in Nigeria has a bright future due to positive demographics and changing cultural and societal behaviour. State governments’ drive to increase internally generated revenue, the central bank’s cashless policy and the proliferation of supermarkets will lead to formalisation of the informal market.
There are unmet needs in food processing, packaging and distribution. Supply chain specialists that can provide refrigeration, central depots, stock management and just-in-time services will benefit manufacturers and potential employees.
An initiative like NIRSAL, set up by the CBN to define, price and share agribusiness credit risk should change the behaviour of financial institutions and stimulate bank lending to agriculture. NIRSAL is spending 66 percent of its $500 million intervention fund on risk sharing and insurance. A critical mass of bright young Nigerians must begin to ponder how to profitably employ the productive years ahead in agribusiness.
Population and productivity are the vital ingredients of sustainable growth. The advice of Jim O’Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs Asset Management, to countries with large work forces is: “If you can be inventive and have all the conditions for productivity, then strong real GDP growth is a bit of doddle.”
With 58 percent of Nigeria’s 167 million population engaged in farming, there are gains to be made from productivity. To our young, developing and rapidly growing workforce, we advice: Go farm, young Nigerians.
