Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), last week met with governors of the country’s Cassava Producing States, where he opened their eyes to the over $600m of cassava derivatives imported into the country yearly.
The cassava value-chain, he said, has the capacity to generate 2m jobs, besides its foreign exchange earnings and conservation potentials, just as it would increase cassava production as starch, glucose, sorbitol, and other products currently being imported.
No wonder, he continued, why the cassava value chain is in line with President Muhammadu Buhari’s economic diversification programme for Nigeria, following which all will be done to reposition her on the map as a leading producer and processor of several varieties of cassava that can be explored to optimum potential.
He identified gaps and potential demand existing in Nigeria’s cassava value chain to include High-Quality Cassava Flour (HQCF) in bread, biscuits, and snacks, which is over 500,000t annually, while supply is below 15,000t; just as demand for cassava starch is above 300,000t annually, but supply is below 10,000t.
Continuing, he put the demand for cassava-based constituents in sugar syrup at over 350,000t annually, with almost no supply; just as “potential demand for ethanol in Nigeria as a fuel for cooking, to power vehicles (E10), and other industrial uses exceeds a billion litres, while production is nearly zero.”
It was based on this premise, he told them, that cassava was included in the FX “exclusion list to salvage the industry, encourage farmers to go back to their farms to boost job creation and increase output and improve the capacity utilization of our processing companies.
The CBN governor lamented that despite the huge investments made therein, during the cassava bread initiative, the industry continues to suffer due to a combination of the low yield varieties, poor farm practices, lack of good quality farm inputs, non-utilization of available cultivable lands, manual system of production, inadequate funding for smallholder out-grower schemes and low processing capacity.
To ameliorate these challenges, and in line with its developmental initiatives, Emefiele said the CBN “is intervening in the sector through a complete value chain approach.
“This will involve support to the Nigeria Cassava Growers Association at the production level under the ‘Anchor Borrowers’ Programme (’ABP) and support to Large Scale Cassava Processors under the CACS and DCRR programmes.”
In line with President Mohammadu Buhari’s agenda of ensuring agricultural growth, he said that the CBN’s is taking is collaborating with the private sector, state governments in Nigeria’s cassava producing areas and other stakeholders to join hands towards resuscitating Nigeria’s cassava sector.
The CBN, he continued, is encouraged by its “game-changing intervention in the rice value chain in Kebbi and other rice-producing States across the country that increased local rice production from 2.5m tonnes in 2015 to 5.8m tones in 2017 as well as cotton intervention with the flag-off of input distribution to 150,000 cotton farmers, cultivating 150,000 hectares in 23 States of the Federation.
“Currently the cotton planted by these farmers has begun fruiting and will soon be ready for harvest and off-take from December 2019,” explaining that the high premium on cassava is because it can generally be put into different uses along the value chain.
The value chain, he said has enormous potential to offer, HQCF, Starch, Sugar Syrups & Sweeteners, Chips – for domestic livestock feed and for export to China, Ethanol/bio-fuels, High Fructose Cassava Syrup (HFCS), Fuel Ethanol (E10) as well as Animal Feed from cassava waste, among others.
The meeting was attended by representatives of large corporations like Nestle, Flour mills, Promasidor, Unilever who require the secondary outputs from cassava such as starch, glucose, sorbitol, etc as raw materials for their final products.
He encouraged state governors and their representatives to make land available particularly to enable unemployed youths to embrace cassava production and processing in the country.
Emefiele said the CBN believes in bringing stakeholders together to agree on a framework for modern production and processing of cassava by ensuring that we identify and tackle all major challenges in the value chain from seedlings production, land clearing, planting, harvesting, processing, marketing and provision of extension services among others.
A highpoint of the event was the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding between the Nigeria Cassava Growers Association and Large Scale Cassava Processors to guarantee steady off-take and processing of cassava in Nigeria going forward.