The Deputy Managing Director of the African Reinsurance Corporation, Ken Aghoghovbia, has stated that the International Trade Administration estimated that Nigeria relies on about $10 billion in imports to satisfy its food and agricultural output gaps.
According to The Punch, Aghoghovbia gave a speech on Wednesday at the Africa Reinsurance Corporation Agriculture Workshop in Lagos.
The two-day event brought together important players in Nigeria’s agriculture insurance sector and was arranged under the International Finance Corporation’s technical assistance provider mandate for the Nigeria Climate Insurance project.
The principal aim of the workshop was to establish a cooperative forum for prominent stakeholders in the industry, such as insurance companies, governmental bodies, farmers’ associations, insurance regulators, financial institutions, input vendors, and commercial farms.
Despite its GDP contribution, the agricultural sector has been negatively impacted by a number of shocks, including flooding and the degradation of crop and pasture land, according to Aghoghovbia’s opening remarks.
He mentioned the low usage of modern technologies, poor access to financing, and disputes between herdsmen and local farmers as other obstacles to the sector’s expansion.
He said that these issues had severely reduced the sector’s production and raised the need for imported food by creating a large imbalance between the supply and demand of food in the area.
“According to the International Trade Administration, Nigeria needs to import roughly $10 billion in order to make up for its deficiencies in food and agricultural production,” he stated.
“Over the past five years, Nigerian insurance market participants have given agriculture insurance a lot of attention. They have been drawn to this sector by the opportunities presented by the need to modernise and commercialise agriculture production as well as the goal of successive governments to diversify the economy.
“The Nigerian agriculture insurance market has the potential to generate a premium of over $600 million due to its diverse range of agriculture enterprises and its approximately 70 million hectares of land dedicated to agriculture.”
