Despite agriculture accounting for 35% of Nigeria’s GDP and employing the same share of the national workforce, the country earns less than $400 million annually from agricultural exports—a surprising shortfall given its vast farmland and youthful population. This message was delivered starkly by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, at the 2025 FirstBank Agric & Export Expo in Lagos .
Nigeria sits atop 85 million hectares of arable land, yet contributes under 0.5% of global agricultural exports. Meanwhile, its annual food import bill tops $10 billion, with staples like wheat, rice, sugar, fish, and tomato paste crowding the docks . This export-import mismatch underscores the unfulfilled potential of the sector.
Kyari and the Tinubu administration advocate for food sovereignty, emphasizing that feeding Nigeria on its own terms—insulated from global shocks—must go hand-in-hand with building a resilient, export-driven agriculture sector .
The minister positioned export support and domestic production as intertwined goals, urging reform of deficient systems—namely financing, infrastructure, and value addition—so Nigeria can pivot from oil dependency to agribusiness resilience .
Data from the Nigerian Export Promotion Council further reveal that non-oil exports reached $4.82 billion in 2024, still a fraction of what oil brings in—and with agriculture being a small contributor within that subtotal .
Meanwhile, structural challenges weigh heavily: weak trade and port infrastructure, high shipping costs, and inefficiencies in processing and logistics undermine Nigeria’s export goals. Analysts point to the urgent need for performance-based trade facilitation, such as rebates for using cold storage or automating port operations .
If the trend continues, Nigeria risks ceding its farmers and food economy to imports and inefficiencies, rather than leveraging its demographic dividend and land resources responsibly.
