Farouk Gumel - The Role of Agriculture in the Economic Development of Nigeria

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Nigeria, like many Africa nations, is an
agrarian nation. Contrary to the general
perception that it is an oil and gas country, the
majority of Nigerians in reality earn their
living through the agricultural and food value
chain. This should not be a surprise. A country
with over 200 million people will surely have a
large appetite. In this article, we are going to
briefly look at how agriculture is one of the
biggest reasons why Nigeria is the worlds 27th
largest economy, and why investing in this sector
will propel Nigeria to greater heights globally.
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Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa with the
highest population on the continent. It was
ranked the 27th largest economy globally and is
among the largest producers of oil and gas in the
world. The whole world knows Nigeria for its Oil
while ignoring its other assets arable land,
water, solid minerals and ofcourse, its young and
talented population. Oil is considered by many
as the biggest contributing factor to the
Nigerian economy, and to some extent, they are
right. Oil reserves in Nigeria amount to 35
billion barrels and oil still remains the largest
earner for the Nigerian government. Most of the
oil is exported in crude form. There is little
value addition locally this means only a few jobs
are created locally.
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Just to be clear, Oil is and will remain a huge
factor in the GDP of Nigeria, but to create a
better and more inclusive economy, Nigeria needs
to focus on its secret weapon, agriculture which
supports more than 70 million people in Nigeria,
In the last 5 years, the Nigerian Government and
the Central Bank of Nigeria have pushed
aggressive fiscal and monetary policies aimed at
harnessing Nigeria's agricultural potentials.
The policies, which target both small scale
farmers and large scale corporates, have resulted
in significant investments in Nigerias
agricultural value chain.
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TGI Group, through its numerous subsidiaries such
as WACOT Ltd is one of the many private sector
companies to participate in this latest push by
Nigeria to put Agriculture to work. WACOT Ltd has
started up projects of new rice mills across
Nigeria and employs over 9,000 workers both in
blue and white-collar jobs. Its new rice mill
which is speculated to be the turning point in
Nigerian agriculture and will provide farming the
boost it needs can store up to 120,000 tonnes of
rice paddy and has the storage facility to keep
that much raw produce for 6 months in advanced
silos. Farouk Gumel, executive director of
Tropical General Investment (TGI) Group has
rightly stated in an article that TGI/WACOT Ltd
projects are made to take advantage of the new
government policy direction and that the new
WACOT Ltd rice mill will bring with it a lot of
opportunities for the people of Nigeria. Farouk
Gumel also stated that WACOT is planning to build
two more rice mills in the coming years.
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