Setting The Example In The Quest For Food Security

As a result of the implementation of farmer incentives and a total ban on rice importation, record breaking rice production has been secured, placing Nigeria as Africa’s largest producer of rice in 2019.

Rice is the basis of most of Nigeria’s popular dishes and the key ingredient to its national dish, Jollof Rice, making Nigeria Africa’s leading consumer of rice. So, when President Buhari’s administration began looking at agriculture as a means to diversify the nation’s economy, it made sense to start off by ramping up domestic production of its main staple food to curtail its hefty rice import bill. A complete ban imposed by the government on rice importation and the creation of an ecosystem linking out-growers to local processors, while training farmers, has managed to save the government a breathtaking total of US$800 million in 2018, according to the Bank of Agriculture (BoA). Through the implementation of a thorough and in-depth scheme at enhancing rice production, the rice revolution is being tackled at all angles, and the success has been resounding.

The Anchor Borrowers Scheme (ABP)

The Anchor Borrower’s Scheme (ABP) is the government’s flagship agriculture programme and is at the heart of the rice revolution’s achievements and the mass production of rice currently underway. Launched by President Buhari in November 17, 2015, the ABP is a collaboration between the Central Bank of Nigeria and the Ministry of Agriculture, creating a link between anchor companies involved in the processing, and small holder farmers in order to encourage and fast track rice cultivation. Through incentives, such as subsidised loans and credit facilities, the provision of farm inputs (affordable fertilisers, seedlings, water pumps) in kind and cash to small holder farmers, free farm land and tax rebates production is boosted and the input supply to agro-processors guaranteed. With the disbursement of NGN 40 billion to over

The Anchor Borrowers Scheme (ABP) is the government’s flagship agriculture programme and is at the heart of the rice revolution’s achievements and the mass production of rice currently underway.

12.2 million rice farmers, the ABP has additionally provided 33.6 million Nigerians with jobs, lifting small holder farmers out of poverty and providing unemployed Nigerians with gainful employment. “The Anchor Borrowers Programme is an intervention. The Bank of Agriculture is the main pioneering institution,” explains Alhaji Kabiru Mohammed-Adamu, CEO of BoA. “We started the Rice Farmer Association collaboration through the Central Bank. We have disbursed over NGN 20 billion to that association. So, all those successes have given an input into those initiatives. Besides that, we are also supporting other crops associations and agric financing. We train farmers along the agric value chain on the basis of best practices in agriculture, so that they can achieve much more yield. The development partners have indicated interest in what we are doing and they are ready to inject more funds for it.” In supporting small-scale farmers and SMEs, the ABP has ensured that Nigeria has emerged from being a net importer of rice to becoming a major producer and exporter, going as far as supplying key markets in neighbouring countries. States, such as Kebbi, have displayed exponential growth with over 78,000 smallholder farmers, cultivating approximately 100,000 hectares of rice farms, and registering approximately 2.5 million metric tonnes in rice production in 2018, compared to its one million tonnes in 2017. States such as Adamawa, Cross River, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Lagos, Niger, Ogun, Plateau, Sokoto and Zamfara are displaying enormous potential and opportunity, in growing rice for exports. In May 2019, the Rice Farmers Association of Nigeria (RIFAN) announced that the production of eight million metric tonnes of rice production had been attained, and that the production of 18 million metric tonnes has been projected to be achieved by 2023.

Rice is Nigeria’s pilot programme and a model upon which to base the production of other cash crops. Godwin Emefiele, Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria states: “The Anchor Borrowers’ Scheme provides loans to farmers without collateral and the benefitting famers are given farm inputs and cash to cultivate their farms, and with the experiment on rice, which has achieved huge success, it is time to extend the scheme to cotton, soya bean and cassava farmers.”

Grist for the mill

The competitiveness in rice production has been contagious; for example, Lagos partnered with Kebbi in its award winning initiative in the production of Lake Rice, providing price reductions for Lagosians, while the Ogun state has launched its own MITROS Rice Mill to produce Ofada Rice. New mills are popping up all around the country as everyone jumps on the rice wagon due to the enormous profitability of building rice mills in Nigeria, with Kano State alone boosting 1,421 rice mills. Due to the rapid increase of agricultural output, the need to enhance capacity utilisation of integrated mills has been critical. Indeed, The role of Public Private Partnerships (PPP) and investors have played an essential part in this aspect of the revolution. Olam , Onyx Rice Mill, Integrated Grain Processors Ltd., Quarra Rice Mill, Igbemo Rice Processing Company Ltd., Dangote Rice Mill are just a few of Nigeria’s leading rice processing companies. While Nigerian business mogul Cosmas Maduka has built a stateof-the-art processing mill in Anambra at a reported cost of US$35 million, with a milling capacity of 40,000 million tonnes per annum and an expected 120,000 million tonnes milling capacity upon completion in 2020.

Nigeria’s efforts to wean the nation from foreign rice consumption and become self-sufficient in rice have paid off, Nigeria is now producing an average of four million tonnes of rice annually. In March 2019, Dr Harold Roy-Macauley, Director General of the Africa Rice Centre, Benin Republic, disclosed that Nigeria had overtaken Egypt as Africa’s largest producer of rice. The success of the nation’s rice revolution has flung open the door to a secure and thriving future for Nigeria’s cash crops, providing a model to follow as it finds and consolidates its place as a rising star in the confederacy of rice producing countries.