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From Okwe Obi, Abuja
President Bola Tinubu has once again, pledged to ensure food sovereignty, stating that Nigeria would no longer export raw cocoa beans used for the importation of chocolate products.
He noted that Nigeria would come up with a plan to transform the country’s cocoa industry through local processing and value addition.
The President, who stated this at the Cocoa Value Addition Summit 2026 in Abuja, yesterday, said the era of exporting raw agricultural commodities without capturing full economic value must end, as Nigeria seeks to create jobs, attract investments and earn more foreign exchange from cocoa.
Represented by the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, he said: “Seven of every 10 cocoa pods on this earth ripen under the African sun. They are grown by African hands on African soil with African knowledge passed down through generations. The global chocolate economy is now valued at well over $130 billion, and by some recent estimates, approaching $165 billion.
“Nigeria will no longer export raw beans while importing finished value. We will ground our beans at home. We will press our butter at home. We will make our chocolate at home, brand it at home and sell it to the world on our own terms.
“And let no one mistake this for rhetoric. The proof is already rising out of the ground. At Sagamu, Nigerian investors are building a 70,000-ton processing facility, the largest this nation has ever seen.
“Our national grinding capacity has crossed 120,000 tons a year, and it’s growing. The Bank of Industry stands ready as a co-convener of this summit, with capital prepared for deployment into bankable projects.”
He revealed that cocoa generated more than N3 trillion in export earnings when global prices exceeded $10,000 per tonne, contributing almost a quarter of Nigeria’s non-oil exports, but warned that the country could no longer depend on exporting raw beans.
“There has never been a moment when processing of origin made more commercial sense than it does today. Nigeria is not asking for charity. Nigeria is offering the best open position in the global food economy. We are open for business and we are serious,” he said.
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Minister of State for Industry, John Owan Enoh, said Nigeria’s ambition was no longer to celebrate the volume of cocoa exported but the value created before the commodity leaves the country.
Enoh lamented that although Cross River State remains one of Nigeria’s leading cocoa-producing states, it still lacks a major cocoa processing plant decades after commercial cultivation began.
The minister added that the Federal Government was also pursuing closer collaboration with Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon to establish a broader African cocoa alliance capable of controlling about 75 percent of global cocoa production, strengthening Africa’s bargaining power in international markets.
He said: “We are not interested in exporting anonymous sacks anymore. We are interested in exporting value. If Nigeria truly wants to build a one-trillion-dollar economy, it cannot continue exporting raw materials while other countries earn the real wealth from processing and branding them.”
On his part, Managing Director of the Bank of Industry (BOI), Olasupo Olusi, said the financial institution was ready to provide long-term financing to accelerate investments across the cocoa value chain.
Olusi disclosed that BOI disbursed more than N164 billion in 2025 to over 3,500 agro-processing and food businesses, supporting factories, mills, warehouses and cold-chain infrastructure, while linking about 48,000 smallholder farmers to industrial value chains.
He said: “We are not approaching cocoa as a lending programme; we are building an industrial ecosystem. Our goal is to finance everything from nurseries and cooperatives to grinding plants, ingredient factories, packaging lines and chocolate manufacturers.
Chief Executive of the Ghana Cocoa Board, Ransford Abbey, called for stronger regional cooperation among Africa’s leading cocoa-producing nations, arguing that the continent must move beyond exporting raw beans to capturing greater value through domestic processing.
He said Africa produces between 75 and 77 percent of the world’s cocoa but earns less than 10 percent of the global chocolate industry’s value, describing the situation as a colonial economic structure that must be dismantled.
