Cassava could transform Nigerian economy say Experts

Chief Executive and Managing Director of Thai Farms International, Louw Burger

This week ‘CNN Marketplace Africa’ reports from Nigeria, exploring how a simple plant, cassava, may be transforming the Nigerian economy and the livelihoods of Nigeria’s cassava farmers.

Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of cassava, a starchy and versatile root which is a staple food in the developing world and can be baked, fried, boiled or steamed. Now, the plant is being used for something else – fl our.

In 2012, in an effort to reduce Nigeria’s wheat import costs, the Nigerian government implemented a policy which stated that companies must add 10 per cent cassava fl our to all wheat flour.

Chief Executive and Managing Director of Thai Farms International, Louw Burger, a Nigerian company that buys cassava from local farmers and processes it into fl our, tells ‘CNN Marketplace Africa’ that cassava is widely grown in Nigeria and around the world.

He explains to the programme: “It’s almost an indigenous plant. It’s grown right across the world in the equatorial belt. It grows like weed, and a farmer with a $3 cutlass can become a cassava farmer. We found at our factory we have nearly 4000 small farmers who supply us with cassava, very few have mechanised, and they can effectively grow large volumes of cassava.”

Burger believes that the cassava industry has the potential to help create jobs in Nigeria. He tells ‘CNN Marketplace Africa’: “Looking at the whole of Nigeria, Nigeria grows around 50 million tons of cassava a year. You put all these things together, you’ve got huge unemployment, a need for work for the young people, you’ve got a crop and a plant that lives here, that can be used to create industrial products, and the elements are all there for a good recipe to develop this thing and to put people to work.”

However, Burger tells ‘CNN Marketplace Africa’ that there wasn’t always such a demand for cassava: “When we started we struggled. In the fi rst year we probably produced 900 tons. Last year we produced 8000 tons. This year we’ll produce 16000, 17000 tons. And the policy wasn’t the only factor; this awakening to the fact cassava you can do more with it than just make curry out of it, but the policy and the drive has made people sit up and take notice.”

The positive effects of the fl our policy have also been felt by the cassava farmers. Alhaji Sherif Adewale Adenuga tells ‘CNN Marketplace Africa’ that the cassava market has grown since he fi rst began farming: “I have been in farming since 1986. Though then it was on a very small scale. Until recently when we began to have a market for our cassava… This policy has helped farmers a lot. We are able to cultivate more area, and as such we are able to employ more people, our own lives have been better.”