Africa must cut reliance on food imports, says Nigerian billionaire
By John Dzundza
19 September 2014
At the height of Nigeria’s recent food crisis, the country was importing over 1.5 million tons of maize from the United States. That’s roughly 10 percent of the country’s annual food requirement.
Over the last 20 years, Nigeria has been importing roughly 10 percent of what it needs. Most of the nation’s maize imports come from the United States, which, like Nigeria, is a major food importer.
It’s not the only country that has depended heavily on imports for decades. But it is the nation that came to the forefront when the US food safety scandal broke in 2009.
The World Food Programme (WFP) revealed that Nigeria imported food for more than half of its population. The agency attributed the crisis to “high demand and low supply,” a situation that was exacerbated by years of mismanagement and political interference in the food sector.
The crisis was only exacerbated by a severe drought in 2011, which led to an estimated 3 million malnourished children. In the context of such a crisis, it is important to look at what caused the crisis.
As President Goodluck Jonathan noted in his August 2014 State of the Nation address, the government had been heavily criticized for not putting an end to the food crisis. This is the reason Jonathan spoke of the need to “do more” to solve the food crisis.
In recent years, the nation has been plagued by high food imports. In 2015, it was estimated that Nigeria was importing more than 1.2 million tons of food.
Food imports currently amount to 6 percent of the nation’s food requirement. With the increased demand and low supply, the government has been importing food for the past four years.
A study by Umeå University in Sweden shows that just 6.3 percent of the global crop is planted in Nigeria. This number is only a small fraction of the world’s crops which are more than 1.1 trillion hectares.
The study further shows that in Nigeria, maize imports were the greatest contributor to the country’s food security crisis.
The study also reveals that Nigeria