Nigeria’s agro industry holds 10m job opportunity

Urgent diversification of the economy through expansion of agro- industries has been brought to the fore, as Roberts Orya, CEO, Nigerian Export Import Bank, says the industry holds 10 million job opportunity.

According to him, the most important pillar for promoting Nigeria’s agro- industrial sector is the potential for job creation across the agric value chain.

He says in a report that the value chain of the agric sector is capable of generating additional 10 million jobs over the next decade, and it can serve as one of the centrepieces of capital formation in Nigeria’s new economy.

“Indeed, agro- processing promises exciting prospects for inclusive growth and social stability,” he says.

Nigeria is heavily endowed with natural assets, unfortunately, the country has concentrated on one – oil, but Orya says the country needs to seriously look towards expansion of agro-industries as key to unlocking the huge potential in agric production.

“One of the reasons economic diversification is an imperative for Nigeria is because the country is too richly endowed with natural assets for us to concentrate on tapping just one. The one we have concentrated on oil is a depleting as- set. Therefore, the economic diversification model that the country needs is one that can help absorb fiscal shocks, fend off monetary instability, provide employment for the teeming work age population as well as generate more revenue for the government to meet its commitments to the people,” Orya notes in the report.

Agriculture, he says, rep- resents the low hanging fruit in the quest to structurally transform the Nigerian economy, saying “the outlook of global agriculture supports this assertion. Since the global spike in food prices in 2008, food security has remained at the front burners of the international policy agenda.”

Beyond this, global agriculture itself is undergoing multiple layers of transition, as “population growth and changing consumption habits have started to drive up demand for food in multiple varieties. By year 2050, the world population will reach 9 billion.That means additional 2 billion people would require food in 35 years’ time, compared with now”.

According to him, the interplay of current domestic demand and supply scenarios also supports a buoyant outlook for agriculture and the agro-industry in Nigeria. On the demand side, Nigeria is a growing market.

He said “we currently profile the over $10 billion we spend yearly on food importation as negative, it actually also paints the picture of an aspect of effective demand which can be served locally, and which can help con- serve our foreign exchange and make the local cur- rency less volatile in value. This therefore provides a strong-financial-returns impetus for additional local investments in agro-food processing. More success with poverty reduction and strengthening of the middle class will further boost food demand growth.”