As shown in the Nigerian daily, The Punch, the WTO stated that while Nigeria has enormous fertile lands and significant agricultural investments the nation has become a net importer of agricultural items that it can cultivate itself, hampering the chance of food sustainability.
This anomaly was noted by Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the Director-General of the WTO in Abuja, at the introduction of seven trade assistance programs started by the WTO-ITC to enhance the development of Nigeria’s trade and industry standards.
These seven projects are the Standards Trade Development Facility, Digital Trade Initiative assistance, Women Exporters Entrepreneurship help, National Trade Portal and, Cotton Development Initiative. They are aimed to promote food security in developing nations, handle the difficulties created by the digital trade gap in e-commerce, and construct a state-of-the-art technical center in Nigeria for all trade-related data and information.
What the Director-General of the WTO said
“We are launching today with STDF, ITC, and the NEPC, a project to help with international safety and quality certification for sesame and cowpeas or black-eyed peas. The agriculture sector in Nigeria has the potential to be a major driver of export diversification and job creation – but too much of this potential remains unrealized, due to a variety of barriers. In fact, Nigeria has not only lost out in agricultural export markets, it is a net food importer spending about billions a year on goods, many of which we can also produce here. Some of Nigeria’s unrealized potential has to do with trade-related problems on the supply side – and that is what this project is seeking to rectify,” she stated.
The DG highlighted that Nigeria’s failure to comply with regional, global, and import country sanitary and phytosanitary requirements has resulted in lost sales, revenue, and hard cash due to export rejections.
“Nigeria is the world’s largest producer and consumer of cowpeas. Sesame is primarily an export crop, and Nigeria is the world’s fourth leading producer, exporting to the EU, Türkiye, Japan, South Korea, and other Asian markets.