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By Chinyere Anyanwu
Nigeria, Africa’s most populous nation, expended a whopping N1.18 trillion in Q2 2025 (April – June) on food importation, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). This marked a major increase from N893.25 billion spent on food imports a year ago.
This has raised concerns among stakeholders who question the sustainability of such expenditure considering the country’s economic outlook.
Such expenditure, they lament, is despite the country’s wealth of agricultural resources capable of feeding the populace in addition to placing it among high net exporters of food products globally.
They argue that value addition, which is essentially the process of taking a product from its raw state to a finished product that offers the consumer greater value while affording the producer greater profit margin, is the way out of incurring such a huge import bill.
At a recent Agric & Export Expo event in Lagos, the Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, highlighted the country’s agricultural capacity, noting that Nigeria has 85 million hectares of arable land and a youthful population, which could be effectively harnessed to make it food-secure and put an end to the soaring food import nightmare.
He noted, however, that despite the availability of land, labour and market potential, “the lack of structured financial frameworks, infrastructure, and value-addition systems undermine its productivity.”
The Lagos State Governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, also at a recent agro based programme, expressed worries over the neglect of agriculture, especially value addition, wherein he said lies the country’s economic wealth.
According to him, “the real wealth in agriculture lies not just in cultivation but in processing, packaging and branding. Exporting raw commodities means we are giving away our wealth and jobs. To truly benefit, Nigeria must build a value chain that moves our crops from farms to global supermarkets as finished products.”
Explaining the role of value addition to erasing Nigeria’s humongous import bill, the Managing Director of Capacious Farms and Foods, Chi Tola Roberts, said, “value addition can drastically reduce Nigeria’s N1.18 trillion food import bill by transforming locally grown raw materials into finished goods that meet consumer demand. When farmers, processors and agro-industries upgrade crops into higher-value products — such as turning tomatoes into puree, cassava into flour, fruits into concentrates or grains into packaged foods — the nation relies less on foreign alternatives. This strengthens local manufacturing, boosts rural economies and keeps money circulating within Nigeria rather than flowing overseas.”
She stressed that, “beyond reducing imports, value addition also improves quality, shelf life and competitiveness of Nigerian food products. With better processing, packaging and branding, local goods can meet global standards, attract regional markets, and even become export-ready. This shift not only protects Nigeria from foreign supply shocks but also creates jobs, encourages innovation, and drives food security — turning the import bill from a national burden into a national opportunity.”
For Mr. Greg Nwamadi, the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Goldridge Bioagro Ltd., value addition is key to attaining and maintaining a clean food import slate.
He noted that, “value addition is a cash intensive process and a conversation the government must have with farmers if they want to move this country forward not just in food sufficiency but also in tackling the country’s huge food import bill.
“If you go to the market, you will see all kinds of unhealthy imported tomato paste, meanwhile, you go to Mile 12 Market and you see fresh produce being wasted.
Whereas the imported brands are mostly made from concentrates that are not healthy, investment in processing fresh produce locally will be more valuable to the economy. So investing in infrastructure to convert our raw agricultural produce into what is consumable is critical to saving the country from spending heavily on food importation.
The result will be that agriculture will become the mainstay of the economy.”
Nwamadi further stated that, “one of the things I have found out as an agricultural practitioner and agribusiness investor is that exporting agricultural raw materials amounts to us shortchanging ourselves, as a country and even as practitioners. The need for value addition cannot be overemphasised.”
