Over the past four years, Nigeria has increased its rice yield from 1.5 metric tonnes to roughly 8 tons per hectare.
According to Leadership, this was disclosed by the governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Godwin Emefiele, while speaking at the Anchor Borrowers Program’s impact on the agricultural sector.
Emefiele noted that, with the Anchor Borrowers Programme, Nigeria had been transformed from the largest importer of rice to self-sustaining.
“Four years after we launched the initiative in 2015, Nigeria is now producing enough rice to sustain itself. Before the Buhari administration took office, Nigeria was the world’s largest rice importer.
“We have prevented rice from entering the nation through certain routes and have supported our smallholder farmers instead of importing rice.”
According to him, the increase in rice production from 1.5 metric tonnes per hectare to 6.57 and 8 metric tonnes per hectare was possible “because we made sure that we gave high yield seeds to farmers and we made sure that we gave fertilizer to farmers instead of the period where people were piling sand and ashes as fertilizer, we made sure to encourage businesses that can make urea which is the main component for fertilizers.”
The Nigerian Ambassador to the Netherlands, Dr. Eniola Ajayi, stated in her opening remarks at the conference with the topic “The Land is Green: Exploring Business and Investment Opportunities in Nigeria” that the session’s goal is to demonstrate why Nigeria is a worthwhile investment.
With a population of more than 230 million, Ajayi observed that “everything sells in Nigeria.” Nigeria is the obvious link to other regions of Africa because it is at the geographic center of the continent. Opportunities inside the Continent are virtually endless according to the Africa Continental Free Trade Agreement.
He said, “I’m sure you’ll agree with me that there’s still a lot of opportunity for growth, even if Netherlands is Nigeria’s top trading partner in both Europe and the rest of the globe, ranking fourth overall. There are a lot more grounds to cover especially in the area of non-oil sectors of Nigeria. Nigeria has a land space of 923,769 square kilometres and a very youthful population with an average age of 18.5 years. I know you will agree that the potential for investment is limitless.”
