An agroprenuer, Mr Kenneth Obiajulu, has called for more investment in the ginger production value chain, as the country ranks 3rd in global production of the commodity.
Obiajulu, the Chief Executive Officer of AgroCorp International Development Limited, made the assertion at a virtual press launch of the company on Thursday in Lagos.
The agroprenuer noted that it was time to make Nigeria earn her place in the global export market of ginger, as he called for more investment in the sector.
“When thinking of ginger, many people automatically think of India and China, the two powerhouses of ginger production and consumption globally, but what many do not know is that the second largest Producer of ginger is located right in the heart of Africa.
“This country is responsible for 16% of global production, but only accounts for 3.5% of global export market share.
“Nigeria ranks third in the production of ginger in the world, which is about 16.5% production in the world but we can barely account for less than 3%of the export market share.
“And that gives us the opportunity to begin to question some things such as what are the issues behind most of challenges in exporting the produce,” the agroprenuer said.
Obiajulu, however, highlighted the potentials of the ginger as well as some bottlenecks on its exports.
He also called for strict adherence to international best practices in the production, processing and packaging of the produce in order to gain international relevance.
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“We have realized that Ginger is one of the crops with international export appeal.
“However, the challenges with the international market buyers are lack of local processing capacity to meet international quality, consistency in supplies and trust related issues.
“Agricorp International Development Limited has developed a workable System to solve these problems.
“The first thing we discovered was that the Production is good but the quality of materials being used need to meet the adequate standardization.
“What we try to do is to test our models to see if we have the capacity to process these produce and meet up with international standards,” Obiajulu said.
The expert noted that owing to increased demand for Nigerian ginger and trusted spices, there is the potential of doing more, if we want to truly be a Pan-African business giant.
“It is not a crowd-funding venture, this is core agriculture, we are focused on that activity of cultivating, processing, packaging and exporting finished spiced goods out of the country.
“This is core agriculture and not just about raising money, we were able to raise capital internally to start the business and debt notes for procurement of raw materials and operations.
“This fund raising bid is our first quest for external investment for institutional partners.
“About 80 to 90 per cent of the products we process are exported to South Africa, Morocco, UAE, India and some parts of Europe,” the expert said. (NAN)
