Opening Address by the Honourable Minister for Agriculture and Rural Development, Chief Audu Ogbeh at the National Summit on Cassava at the Sheraton Hotel, Abuja on 08 September, 2016.

PROTOCOL

Thank you all for having me. Let me begin by thanking the organisers for putting this event together. Collaborations such as these - between development organisations, international partners, the private sector and the Federal Government - are the kind that will make a difference as we move towards a cassava sector that fulfils its potential.

At the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), we have recently launched a new 5-year Agricultural Promotion Policy (2016-2020) as a follow-up to the 2011-2016 Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the last administration. The two priorities we have set in our new strategic approach include: producing enough fresh, high quality foods for the Nigerian market and serving the export market; which will positively affect the balance of payment position of the country by reducing the bill on food imports and by generating foreign exchange.

As we all know, the cassava industry’s potential has been hampered by the same factors that have hindered the development in other agricultural sub-sectors, such as: relatively low yields and high production costs, weak value chain coordination, poor infrastructure and poor access to finance.

We are also aware of government’s role has been a contributing factor in constraining important agricultural sub-sectors like cassava. For many years, we have badly suffered from policy instability driven by high rate of turnover of programmes and personnel, which in turn has made the application of policy instruments inconsistent. This has led to an uneven development in agriculture and lack of policy accountability and transparency as well as weak governance of the sector.

As you can imagine, these kinds of challenges have not endeared Nigeria to investors. Our Ministry held two surveys of agribusiness investors in Nigeria in 2013. The results showed that agribusiness investors identified their top constraints as: lack of government coordination; inconsistencies in policy, regulatory, laws, taxes and

administrative practices; lack of security of raw material supplies to food processors; and lack of human capital.

That is why it is good to see gathered here for the National Cassava Summit today a mix of important stakeholders that are already playing a key role in the development in the cassava sub-sector. It is only through multi-stakeholder engagements such as this one that we can match strategic coordination among decision-making authorities with common and public goals for a renewed approach to agriculture in the country. This would also help build an evidence base to drive decision-making, as well as build on prior successes.

I would also like to place on record that the discussions that will take place today have huge importance for the policy thrusts of this administration, because cassava is high on our agenda. As part of the process of improving domestic food security and boosting export earnings, cassava is among the crops we are prioritising between 2016 and 2018, alongside cocoa, oil palm, sesame, and gum arabic. We are focusing our policies on the stimulation of supply and demand for agricultural produce by facilitating linkages between producer and off-takers, mindful of the need to stabilise prices and reducing price volatility through market-led price stabilisation mechanisms. There are many ways in which we could potentially do this, from commodity exchanges to extended farm-gate price under value chains coordination mechanisms and agricultural insurance, but from this stakeholder dialogue today, I hope to see the emergence of some innovative and practical ideas on how best to stimulate supply and demand for cassava in a way that benefits small and large-scale actors along the entire value chain.

Considering the survey on agribusiness investors that I told you about earlier, ease of doing business has to be high on our agenda if we want cassava to be a $5 billion industry over the next five years. This will mean addressing the areas that agribusiness investors have said are their biggest challenges: lack of government coordination, inconsistent policies across the board; lack of security for raw materials, and lack of human capital. To achieve this, we are working towards providing a conducive legislative and agricultural knowledge framework that includes macro—level policymaking, security for physical infrastructure and institutional mechanisms for coordination to enhance access to adequate inputs, finance, and information on innovations, services and markets.

It is also important to note that the ease of doing business and market access is not only an issue for commercial players but for small agri-businesses and farming cooperatives as well. We hope to deal with market access issues in partnership with private sector actors, and see this Summit as an opportunity interact with key players across the value chain in this regard. We are aware that access to finance is still an issue we need to address; lending has increased between 1% in 2011 to ~6% in 2015, but that progress still leaves a lot of work to be done. Based on prior discussions between CBN, the Bankers Committee, our Ministry, and the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NISRAL), a 10% of all formal credit provided should go to agriculture by 2017 – 2018. Access to insurance contracts also remains a challenge. While new providers have been licensed by the Insurance Commission to retail agricultural insurance (like IGI), Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation (NAIC) remains the dominant supplier. However agricultural insurance penetration remains below 3% (measured by farmers enrolled and cropping area covered) versus 10% target (using India and China as proxies) which would be a reasonable target by 2021. This is a key factor in making agriculture a viable enterprise for our farmers, and deserves our focus, and there will be no $5 billion cassava industry in five years without our farmers.

As we discuss value chain development in cassava, we must also remember to discuss post-harvest handling of agricultural produce. This way, we can ensure progressive and sustainable expansion of agribusiness, investment and agro-processing activities in a way that drastically reduces waste, increases food security, and makes a dent in our import bill. Improving post-harvest handing is also important as we consider ways to prepare crops for export and address barriers to trade. Tariff regimes are an issue, but an even bigger barrier to exports is overcoming phytosanitary requirements set by importing countries. To overcome this challenge, we need the support of the entire value chain of market actors, including everyone in this room and beyond.

I would like to use this opportunity to congratulate the newly formed Industrial Cassava Stakeholders Association of Nigeria on its launch, which I am made to understand was made to coincide with this Summit. I understand that this Association has now been formally registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission. It is really gratifying to note that stakeholders have mobilized

themselves into a body like this to promote the advancement of a very important value chain. Indeed, I encourage everyone with an interest in the development of the cassava value chain to support the Association in realising its lofty objectives for cassava development in Nigeria.

The journey of a $5 billion begins with a single step, and we are here to take that step together. Our Ministry is here to listen and learn of innovative ways in which we can collaborate to address the challenges ahead. We will not go far in surmounting the challenges facing the cassava value chain if we attempt to go it alone. That you all are here shows that you know this as well as we do.

With that, I welcome you all to the National Cassava Summit and wish you all fruitful deliberations.