Nigeria to export rice ‘in four years’

Nigeria will soon join Thailand and India as a major exporters of rice to the international market, minister of agriculture, Dr Akinwumi Adesina, said on Tuesday this while delivering a keynote address at the opening of the 2014 African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) in Addis Ababa.

Adesina said that Nigeria had within the past four years turned the tide of being the second largest importer of rice in the world after China to being a producer of the commodity.

“As minister of agriculture in Nigeria, with my previous research work and knowledge of the potential of the improved rice varieties, we immediately set the target for Nigeria to become self-sufficient in rice.

“We had turned the corner and reached close to 80 per cent of our new rice policy which has attracted $1.6 billion of private sector investments.

“We expect that Nigeria will become a net exporter of rice, just like Thailand or India, within the next four years,” he said.

He said that the national paddy rice production rose by an additional seven million metric tonnes while net incomes of farmers rose by 2.5 billion dollars within the period.

Adesina said that Nigeria achieved the height through policies that encouraged private seed companies to produce “foundation and commercial seeds”.

“This removed the monopoly of the government over foundation seeds and unlocked the power of seed companies to work directly with plant breeders to develop their own foundation seeds.

“Farmers were provided with subsidized farm inputs for seeds and fertilizers via electronic vouchers on their mobile phones. We launched dry season rice production to complement wet season rice production.

“The impact was massive; between 2012 and 2014, six million rice farmers were reached with the improved rice varieties. Total cumulative cultivated rice area rose by two million hectares,” he said.

Adesina attributed the success to “science and technology matched with supportive policy instruments to drive impacts at scale”.

“I recall my time as a scientist in the mid-1990s at the West Africa Rice Development Association in Cote d’Ivoire, when the New Rice for Africa (NERICA) was being developed.

“The new varieties were adapted to conditions of smallholder farmers and gave very good yields. The challenge was how to ensure their adoption by farmers at scale,” he said.

The minister, however, said despite the gains by Nigeria and other African nations, malnutrition remained a perennial problem.

He said that about 80 per cent of the “world’s stunted children live in just 14 countries of which eight are in Africa.

“Today there exist bio-fortified crops such as pro-vitamin A cassava, orange flesh sweet potato, high iron beans, which are being grown by farmers in Nigeria, Rwanda, Kenya and Mozambique.

“Of the 1.5 million farming households now growing bio-fortified food crops, 1.4 million are in Africa. So, the challenge is no longer the science of bio-fortification.

“Our challenge as policy makers now is to build up demand and scale up bio-fortified crops to reach millions of households.

“To achieve this, we must address supply and demand side issues, including policy, institutional, regulatory and financing of nutrition.”

According to him, the future of Africa depended on how the continent encouraged its youth population, “a hungry child cannot learn and a malnourished kid will become brain impaired, with low-income earnings in the future”.

The minister urged African governments to partner farmers, especially women and youth to implement research studies and to adapt to climate change.