The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, has said that Nigeria spends $10 billion annually on food imports. He recently revealed that the nation spends a lot of money on agro-imports, including wheat and fish, every year.
Speaking at the First Bank of Nigeria Ltd., 2025 Agric and Export Expo, in Lagos, Kyari highlighted the growing rate of agro-imports, emphasising the need for more investment into agricultural activities to boost local exports.
According to him, more funds must be pumped into revamping Nigeria’s agriculture sector to boost food export revenue generation in the coming years.
He stated that spending several billions of dollars on importing food like rice, sugar, and fish should not be the case for a country that can thrive with agriculture.
“Nigeria spends over $10 billion annually importing food such as wheat, rice, sugar, fish and even tomato paste.
Agriculture already contributes 35 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product and employs 35 per cent of our workforce.
We sit on 85 million hectares of urban land with a youth population of over 70 per cent under the age of 30, yet Nigeria accounts for less than 0.5 per cent of global exports.
However, Nigeria earns less than $400 million from agro exports, to build a non-oil export economy, we must rethink how we finance agriculture,” he said.
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He reaffirmed the Tinubu’s government’s stance on guaranteing food sovereignty of the country, stressing the need for further financing of agriculture.
Sen. Abubakar Kyari concluded by saying that the target is to ensure no Nigerian starves because of irregularities in the global food supply chain.
“President Tinubu’s administration has made it clear that food sovereignty is the goal. Nigeria must not only feed itself, but to do on its own terms, free from excessive dependency on imports.
Sovereignty means ensuring that no Nigerian goes hungry because of shocks in the global food supply chain, allowing every community to stand on the strength of our land, our people and our productivity.
Boosting domestic production and building support for exports are not separate agendas. They are two sides of the same coin.
We have the land, the labour, and the markets, but we lack the system of financing, value addition and infrastructure that converts potential into prosperity.
The fundamentals compel that we pilot from dependence on oil rigs to resilience in food and export earnings from rural commodity exports to value-added agribusiness.
From fragmented farmer credit to structured financial systems that attract significant capital and from stereotyped perceptions to improved participation of youth in the agricultural sector,” Kyari said.
Nigeria can do better if we begin to think critically and improve mechanisms such as revenue sharing, finance, agricultural goals with performance triggers, factoring forward contracts Pay-as-Harvest, and the rest.
These are not abstract theories. They are working in real economies,” he added.
