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China-Africa Trade Information Service
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China-Africa Trade Information Service
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The operators in charge of the Nigerian Ministry of Agriculture said that despite the huge business opportunities in Nigerian agriculture, the country lacks sufficient processing facilities, hence the need to establish an agricultural industrial processing zones.
Stakeholders at the recent private sector investors' forum organised by the African Development Bank in Abuja engaged in extensive discussions on the gains of establishing agro-industrial processing zones in Nigeria that would not only boost the contributions of the sector to the country's Gross Domestic Product but would assist massively in job creation.
At the forum, the AfDB announced that it would establish special agro-industrial processing zones in Nigeria.
The broad objectives for the establishment of special agro-industrial processing zones are to raise income, eliminate unemployment, especially youth joblessness, reduce food import bill to the barest minimum and reduce prices of high-value food products.This will be done by raising the productivity of the agro-industry sub-sectors including forestry, livestock and fisheries production and through value addition to these materials by way of agro-industrial processing.
SAPZ initiative would be implemented by identifying the raw materials and communities/locations engaged in the production of strategic materials.The next step was to agree on and create the knowledge and infrastructure capacity for production enhancement, processing and quality export at competitive prices.The Federal Government of Nigeria would be supported through the AfDB to invest in farm-to-market roads, provide infrastructure, and improve export capacity at land borders, seaports and airports.
AfDB's Country Operations Manager in Nigeria, Lawson Zankli, noted that in high-income economies, the share of agribusiness in GDP was substantially higher than that of agriculture, adding that globally, the agri-food industry, which was a subset of manufacturing agro-industrial processing, was the largest subsector of the manufacturing industries, representing 10 to 30 per cent of the sector.
He explained that with an output of nearly $8tn and more than 40 million employees in 2018, it was bigger than the global IT and automotive industries by eight and five times respectively.
Currently, Nigeria trails in the supply of quality agro-processing products. The African region accounts for less than three per cent of global gross output, and less than one per cent of global manufacturing output.
This is despite growing demand for higher-value processed agro-industry products. Nigeria must take advantage of the opportunities in this sector to create non-oil sector jobs and raise its GDP.
