The economics of food access is not so straightforward. It involves eliminating poverty, first, to enable 86.4 million Nigerians have access to food and important nutrients. This could translate into high consumer spending and improved margins for firms. Companies will then create jobs to match increasing purchases from millions of households.
But this, again, is not straightforward for Africa’s most populous nation. In July, Nigeria was included among 27 countries that were on the frontline of impending COVID-19-driven food crises— in a joint report by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP).
The report, which identified countries where the pandemic’s ‘knock-on effects aggravate pre-existing drivers of hunger,’ had Nigeria sharing the unenviable list with countries such as Afghanistan, Haiti, Venezuela, Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan, Syria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Liberia, Mali, Niger, and Zimbabwe, to mention a few.
The joint analysis by both organisations warned that these ‘hotspot countries’ were at high risk of – and in some cases were already seeing – significant food security deteriorations in the coming months, including rising numbers of people pushed into acute hunger.
The situation at present is even direr as 86.4 million people in Nigeria face moderate or severe food insecurity according to this year’s State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World, an annual flagship report jointly prepared by FAO, IFAD, UNICEF and WFP.
It also states that 36.8 percent of children under the age of five are experiencing stunted growth and 49.8 percent of women of reproductive age have anaemia.
In cost and affordability of nutrient adequate diet, this represents 34 percent of expenditure and cannot be afforded by 72.7 percent of the population. In cost and affordability of healthy diet, this constitutes 64.1 percent of expenditure and 91.1 percent of the population cannot afford it. As at 2019, the country had 24.6 million undernourished people while 17.8 million were severely food insecure.
“Nigeria must empower its citizens to enable them have enough money to buy healthy diets. This begins with improving the economy by tackling inflation, poor infrastructure, and providing firms with incentives to employ people,” Ifeanyi Okeleke, CEO of Kenfrancis Farms, based in South-East of Nigeria, states.
In the 2019 Global Hunger Index, Nigeria ranked 93rd out of 11 countries, with a score of 27.9 points, higher than Ghana (14 points), South Africa (14 points), Egypt (14.6), and Senegal (17.9).
Hunger has serious economic consequences. The FOA says it significantly lowers physical ability, cognitive development and learning achievement, resulting in lower productivity.
“It not only blights the lives of individuals and families but also reduces the return on investment in social and economic progress,” FOA further notes in a report.
Most of the countries mentioned in the FOA-WFP report have low levels of growth, high level of unemployment and low investment in agriculture.
In the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2019 (SOFI 2019), WFP said hunger was increasing in countries facing slow or declining economic growth.
“Economic downturns or slowdowns often lead to a rise in unemployment and a decline in wages limit access to food for vulnerable people,” WFP further said.
Countries with high number of poor people have a large population of people without access to food. Their productivity and purchasing power are low, leading to low margins by firms. This reduces economic growth and the capacity of firms to create jobs. And Nigeria with almost 44 percent of extremely poor people falls into this class.
The population of those who are food insecure in Nigeria would only worsen if there is an emergency and the country is unable to deploy food from its reserves.
Worsening the indices, Nigeria has only about 30,000 metric tons of grains in the strategic grains reserve, out of a capacity of 1.3 million metric tons, the country is grossly unprepared for any national emergency.
“How do we restock the food reserve and putting back more than what was there before?” asks Kabir Ibrahim, president, All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN) in a phone interview. “That is very germane, because if we go by what is happening now with the insecurity in the North West and parts of the North East, where food is produced, there might be some shortage,” he says.
If Nigeria is able to stock to full capacity, Ibrahim avers “it will be able to feed the country even if there are two consecutive seasons of no production.” However, putting just a few thousand like the 70,000 that should have been distributed recently is according to him, “like a drop in the ocean.”
This is not the first time in Nigeria that the Federal Government had to draw down its grain reserves. Earlier, 30,000MT was disbursed in response to food crisis at the various Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps across the country, noted a PwC report in June on ‘Responding to the impact of COVID-19 on food security and agriculture in Nigeria.
The report noted in 2009 a total of 78,000MT was distributed out the available 85,000MT. In 2011, purchases were ordered to replenish the stock while the remainder was distributed that year, leaving no grains in storage.
“We have the privatised silos that are not storing any grains as of today,” remarks Ayodeji Balogun, CEO of AFEX in a Skype interview, saying, “They have not been efficiently used almost going to two years since the privatisation has been concluded, worse than even when the ministry (of agriculture) used it.”
According to Balogun, the food reserves are used by other countries as a buffer for deficits, and to also mop up when there are excesses so as to stabilise the markets. In Nigeria today, this is currently lacking.
“It is essential that this next planting season works. I don’t have words for my concern if we don’t get the inputs in time into the hands of the farmers, dealing with rain-fed agricultural crops,” noted Andrew Nevin, chief economist at PWC West Africa during a webinar session last month. “There is nothing worse for this country than if we have a food crisis or famine after the next harvest,” he said.
Samuel Ogallah, senior climate specialist for Africa, Solidaridad, had suggested, “There is an urgent need for institutional review of policies and realignment.” According to Ogallah, in the wake of Covid-19, it has exposed how Nigeria’s policies are not aligned at the federal down to the local government level.
“Some of the policies are made at the federal level, but where are the farmers based? The farmers are based in the grassroots at the local government level, so the trickling down of those policies has become a challenge. There is urgent need, in the wake of Covid-19, for policy realignment,” he said.
Also making food security challenging is availability of water for food production, as farmers largely rely on rain-fed cultivation. However, according to the Ministry of Water Resources, Nigeria has about 264 dams with a combined storage capacity of 33 BCM of water for multipurpose use that includes Water Supply, Irrigation, Hydropower, fisheries, eco-tourism, etc, out of which 210 are owned by the Federal Government, 34 by States and 20 by private organisations.
These dams have about 350,000 hectares of irrigable land around the vicinities ready for development.
Although not all of the dams were designed strictly for agriculture, as some have hydroelectric purposes, these facilities remain grossly underutilised, despite Nigeria’s need to muster all available resources for agricultural development.
“What is the ministry of water’s plan for the reservoirs and the dams?” remarked Sani Dangote, vice president, Dangote Group, “The ministry of agriculture is completely disconnected from the ministry of water resources.”
With over 230 dams in the country, how many of them are utilised for agricultural purpose, he wondered, further saying even the few in use for irrigation most farmers still have to draw their own water lines because the supply is not fully organised.
