NEWS that Nigeria has leapfrogged SA to become Africa’s largest economy has raised more than a few global eyebrows. But while politicians from Nigeria’s neighbouring countries rushed to pat the new African economic powerhouse on the back, they would do well to take a leaf out of Nigeria’s book and apply the many lessons it offers in successful economic turnaround to their own countries. And SA is no exception.
Granted, with a population of 170-million, Nigeria is about three times bigger than SA, and it enjoys access to significantly more arable land (about 84-million hectares) than SA. But when one considers that Nigeria’s agriculture sector contributes about 22% to the country’s gross domestic product (GDP), while SA’s agricultural contribution is about 2%, it is clear that Nigeria is doing something right when it comes to fully leveraging the economic potential its farming offers.
What makes this GDP contribution by Nigerian agriculture even more impressive is that it comes following an extended period of severe neglect, during which the country placed a much higher priority on its oil resources.
But as recently as 2011, the economic focus shifted back to agriculture with the launch of the Agricultural Transformation Agenda, which had as its primary goals the addition of 20-million metric tonnes of food to domestic supply by next year and the creation of 3.5-million jobs in farm-and food-related industries.
While these were obviously ambitious goals, Nigeria has largely achieved them.
One of the main keys to Nigeria’s relatively astounding agricultural turnaround since 2011 was almost certainly political will. The Nigerian government recognised the immense potential that agriculture had to drive greater economic growth and, more importantly, it acknowledged that it needed to take proactive steps to drive the transformation that would allow the sector to fulfil that role. When politicians, policy makers, and the private sector put their minds to finding and delivering practical mechanisms to promote change and growth in this way, transformation happens.
The clue to Nigeria’s ability to take a holistic view of agriculture and the potential it has to not just drive economic growth, but also uplift the lives of the country’s people, lies in the title of one political figure. Akinwumi Adesina is Nigeria’s minister of agriculture. However, he is also the country’s minister of rural development.
Given the potential for small-scale farming not only to contribute significantly to overall agricultural sustainability and independence from imports, but also to create sustainable livelihoods for millions of people in rural communities, it makes sense that the same political leader heads both of these portfolios.
In the majority of developing nations, innovation and farming do not typically coexist. Under Adesina’s guidance, Nigeria has changed this paradigm — with impressive results. The country recognised that offering subsidies is one thing, but these cannot be effective unless they are made easily accessible to all farmers. To achieve this, it harnessed technology by developing an “electronic wallet system” that delivered subsidy vouchers to farmers via cellphones. So far, the initiative has enabled 5-million smallholder farmers to receive subsidised electronic vouchers for seeds and fertilisers.
Possibly the most significant of Nigeria’s achievements in this area is the ability to deliver on its top millennium development goal by reducing the number of hungry people by half — three years ahead of schedule.
It is interesting that South African agriculture is already in a much better position to deliver the same transformation than Nigeria was when it started the process in 2011. Our country has world-class mechanisms in place to access and capitalise on agriculture markets. Our infrastructure is generally highly advanced, with the challenges of produce storage, cold chain management, processing and transport largely met. What is more, our government clearly recognises the importance of agriculture as a key economic growth and social change driver.
So, the solid foundations are in place, but to build our agriculture sector on them, we need to be willing to learn from the success of others, adapt the lessons they offer, and diligently apply them to transform our country’s agriculture.
Arguably the most valuable of all these lessons is that it can be done. Now we just need to make the decision to do it.
(BUSINESS DAY)
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