The Nigerian food market has been estimated to be around $233.53 billion in 2025, with an expected annual growth rate of 10.76 per cent from 2025 to 2030.

Vanguard reported that the Managing Director of fair-trade Messe, Paul Marz, organiser of the annual Nigeria agrofood Exhibition and Conference, stated this in his welcome address at the 2026 edition of the exhibition held in Lagos last week.

He noted that this year’s edition of the event, co-organised with its local partner Modion Communications, brought together companies, innovators, and decision-makers from Nigeria and around the world to chart pathway solutions to strengthen the value chains, improve productivity, and support the continued development of Nigeria’s dynamic agrofood industries in sectors such as agro, food and beverage technology, food ingredients, packaging, and food & hospitality.

“The 2026 edition, which is the eleventh, with the theme, “Achieving World-Class Food Security in Nigeria”, features the largest international participation in the event’s history, with 137 exhibitors from four continents and 17 countries.

“By enabling direct engagement with international solution providers, agrofood Nigeria promotes technology transfer, strengthens supply chains and supports informed investment decisions across Nigeria and the wider West African market.

“With imports of food & packaging technology of 265 million euro in 2024, Nigeria is West Africa’s largest importer of such technologies. This also applies to Nigeria’s packaging technology imports which amounted to 121 million euro in 2024.

“The Nigerian food market is projected to reach around $233.53 billion in 2025, with an expected annual growth rate of 10.76% from 2025 to 2030,” Marz stated.

In his remarks, President of the Organisation for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa (OTACCWA), Mr. Alexander Isong, lamented the Nigerian economy has been unable to enjoy the benefits of cold chain technology. According to him, the real bottleneck in the food industry in Nigeria is no longer on the farm, but everything that happens after the harvest.

“Last year alone, Nigeria lost between N3.5 trillion and N5 trillion – that is 30 to 40 million metric tonnes of food – to post-harvest waste, mainly because of poor storage and broken logistics. On top of that, over 97 per cent of our agricultural exports still leave the country completely unprocessed,” he noted.