For Nigeria to achieve food security, government must treat manufacturing as infrastructure – Balogun

Adeola Balogun, founder and the CEO of Limlim Foods Production Company Ltd, is into African agricultural food processing and in the campaign to reducing food losses in Nigeria. In this interview with NGOZI OKPALAKUNNE, she discussed the critical link between inadequate food storage and food insecurity in Nigeria. She called for government and corporate actions to boost storage facilities, and highlighted key challenges facing food production entrepreneurs, offering expert solution. Excerpts:

What inspired your venture into food production?

I didn’t start food processing because it sounded glamorous. I started because someone challenged me with a simple truth that people will always eat. At a time, it felt like one of the few businesses you could bet on with confidence.

But once I got closer to the value chain, I saw the real story. Food is not just what ends up on a plate. It is health, jobs, income for farmers, and stability for families. In Nigeria, you can watch months of farming effort disappear in a few hours because of poor storage, bad roads, or a broken supply chain.

When you see that up close, food stops looking like a “business idea” and starts looking like responsibility. That is what kept me. I realised you can build a profitable company and still solve a real problem by helping local produce last longer, travel better, and reach people safely.

How do you ensure quality control and food safety in your production process?

Quality and food safety are not slogans in our business. They’re non-negotiable. If you want repeat orders and long-term partners, you can’t treat safety as an afterthought.

My background in multinational food companies taught me that trust is fragile, one bad batch can destroy it.

That’s why we run on systems. Documented processes, traceability, hygiene, and GMP discipline, and routine checks that happen consistently. We’re HACCP certified, our products are NAFDAC approved, and we keep the standards expected in regulated markets. Certifications are not decorations, they force structure and accountability. Most importantly, quality is everyone’s job. QA cannot “inspect quality into food.” The line operators, warehouse team, and procurement all influence safety, so we build that responsibility into the culture.

How do you stay ahead of trends and competition in the food industry?

I don’t chase trends. I watch underlying changes in the market, then I move deliberately. Nigeria’s food industry moves fast because inflation changes what people can afford, foreign exchange affects input costs overnight, and consumers keep demanding healthier, more convenient options. If you keep producing the same way you did two years ago, the market will quietly move on without you.

So my lens is simple. I stay curious, I study global innovation, and I keep asking, what will actually work here, with Nigerian-grown produce, logistics, power realities, and consumers, without dropping our quality standards? That question forces discipline, because not every “global best practice” survives local conditions.

On the ground, this shows up in the work people don’t always see. We test and refine products constantly. We improve packaging because shelf life is not luck, it is science and control. We tighten sourcing because raw material quality starts at the farm gate. We upgrade processes to cut waste because waste is cost, and in this economy, cost will break you.

I also listen closely to the market. Retailers, consumers, and B2B buyers are not shy, they tell you what they like, what they hate, and what they will pay for, if you pay attention.

And I don’t define competition narrowly. It’s other brands, yes, but it’s also imports, substitutes, and the fact that consumer habits change faster than most factories can adapt. My strategy is to keep improving value, quality, and reliability, because in food, consistency is what builds trust, and trust is what keeps you in business.

Food insecurity has been a major challenge in the country. What is responsible and, what is the way out?

Food insecurity in Nigeria is not a single issue, it’s a chain reaction. If farmers lack quality inputs, extension support, mechanisation, irrigation, and basic Good Agricultural Practices, yields drop, and contamination risks rise. Then insecurity enters the picture. You cannot build food security when farmers go to bed unsure they can return to their farms safely. Add farmer herder tensions and grazing pressures, and production shrinks, or farms get abandoned entirely. Even when food is produced, our logistics often destroy value. Bad roads and unsafe routes turn short journeys into long, risky trips. Perishables don’t have patience.

The longer produce stays in transit without proper handling and temperature control, the more quality drops, losses rise, and prices climb for consumers.

The fix is coordination, and not about news headlines. Strengthen productivity at the farm level, secure farming communities, invest in rural roads and reliable transport corridors, and scale storage and processing to reduce post-harvest losses. Most importantly, Nigeria must treat food processing as strategic infrastructure. When we process locally, we preserve value, stabilise supply, create jobs, and reduce the pressure on foreign exchange.

What measures can Nigeria implement to tackle inadequate food storage facilities and diminish its impact on food security?

Nigeria needs a real storage plan, not scattered projects that look good on paper and disappear in practice. The priority is to build pack houses and aggregation centres close to farming clusters, where produce can be sorted, graded, and cooled when necessary.

For grains and staples, we need more functional dry storage, hermetic solutions, warehouses with proper ventilation, moisture control, and pest management. Storage is not “space,” it’s preservation of value. Government can’t do this alone, and the private sector won’t move at scale without the right conditions. The smartest approach is practical PPPs, private operators build and run storage hubs, while government provides land, speeds up approvals, and offers targeted incentives.

Financing must also match the reality of infrastructure, long-tenor loans, and risk-sharing that make storage investable, not a charity project. And power has to be addressed upfront.

Cold chain dies without reliable energy, so we should scale solar and hybrid cold rooms and cluster industrial power solutions around food hubs.

Storage is not only buildings. Its standards and skills. Nigeria must train operators, enforce storage protocols, and expand warehouse receipt systems so farmers and aggregators can store safely, access credit, and sell at better prices instead of being forced into distress sales.

How can Nigeria curb the sale of expired food products in supermarkets and mitigate health implications?

Expired food doesn’t suddenly appear on supermarket shelves. It usually travels through open markets and informal supply chains where accountability is weak and enforcement is inconsistent. Awareness campaigns help, but they won’t solve it on their own. People change behaviour when the rules are clear, inspections are routine, and penalties are certain. Nigeria needs tighter accountability from distributor to retailer. Regulators should increase spot checks, publish consequences for repeat offenders, and apply penalties that actually hurt, not penalties people budget for.

Retailers also need to professionalise stock management, use FEFO, First-Expired-First-Out, and run expiry checks as a daily discipline, not an occasional cleanup.

Technology can close a lot of gaps quickly. Barcode-based expiry scanning, simple digital stock systems, and basic traceability requirements for distributors would make it harder for compromised products to move quietly.

Regulators should also create safe, anonymous reporting channels for staff and consumers and act fast on verified reports.

This is not a small issue. Expired food increases illness, pushes up hospital bills, reduces productivity, and damages trust in the entire food system. The short-term profit is never worth the long-term cost, because in a marketplace like ours, the harm can reach anyone.

What major problems face entrepreneurs in food production? What is the solution?

Food entrepreneurs in Nigeria don’t struggle because they lack ideas, they struggle because the system makes execution expensive. Regulatory processes can take too long, requirements can change depending on who you meet, and compliance can feel like a moving target.

Then infrastructure adds another tax. Most processors provide their own power, water, and sometimes even basic access.

That pushes up unit cost and makes local products fight an unfair battle against imports and countries that subsidise industry properly.

Funding is another pressure point. Food processing needs patient capital because equipment, quality systems, and distribution take time to settle.

High-interest short-term loans don’t build factories, they build stress. Talent also matters. A food factory runs on skilled technicians, quality professionals, and maintenance competence.

Without that, downtime and inconsistency become normal. The fix is practical. Nigeria should digitise and standardise approvals to cut discretion and delays.

We should build industrial food parks with shared power, water, labs, and waste management so processors can focus on production, not survival. We also need longer-tenor financing at realistic rates, plus serious support for export readiness so processors can earn stable foreign exchange. If Nigeria wants food security and jobs, it must treat food manufacturing like infrastructure, not a side project.