ABUJA, NIGERIA — Nigeria’s journey to transform itself from a net wheat importer to a self-sufficient producer has been characterized by hits and misses as the government and wheat milling companies report mixed results from ongoing and previous diverse market intervention measures that include a blend of subsidies and wheat trade restrictions.

Although reports indicate Nigeria’s wheat production has nearly doubled since 2020, the country’s consumption is said to have gone up by more than 45% as have the wheat imports to meet domestic market demand.

Wheat production in Nigeria’s key growing regions of Kano, Borno, Bauchi, Yobe, Zamfra and Jigawa is projected to reach 140,000 tonnes for the 2026-27 marketing year, a 7% increase from last year’s output. However, demand is projected at more than 6.8 million tonnes, which the Foreign Agricultural Service of the US Department of Agriculture predicts will be met by an increase in import volumes to 7.2 million tonnes. Projected imports this year are nearly 500,000 tonnes more than in 2025-26.

Nigeria’s production is expected to increase by at least 10,000 tonnes year on year in 2026-27, compared to an estimated consumption demand of 400,000 tonnes during the period.

During the last 10 years, the government, through the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security, has attempted to reduce the wheat import bill by at least 50% and increase wheat yield per acre.

Cutting wheat production costs

In some instances, the Nigerian government has been working with wheat milling companies and regional agencies such as the African Development Bank (AfDB) on ways to cut the cost of wheat production and increase earnings for local producers to reduce dependence on imports and meet domestic consumption demand.

For example, the West African country, with a population of more than 220 million people and annual per capita wheat consumption of 25 kg, has been implementing the National Agricultural Growth Support Scheme — Agro-Pocket (NAGS-AP), a multi-million-dollar agricultural scheme financed by AfDB to increase production of its key agricultural grains including wheat. The project is expected to increase output by an additional 3.2 million annually and enhance farm yields to 6 tonnes per hectare by 2027.

Through the NAGS-AP initiative, which is implemented by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security in partnership with the Ministry of Finance, through the NAGS-AP national project secretariat, Nigerian wheat farmers get a 25% and 50% subsidy on seeds and fertilizers, respectively. They also receive access to extension services, agricultural insurance, access to credit facilities, climate-smart technologies and use of digital platforms in their operations. 

Although AfDB said the project is independently monitored and assessed, including using farmers’ surveys by the National Agricultural Extension and Research Liaison Services, utilizing remote sensing and satellite mapping analysis of total area under wheat cultivation, there have been concerns about transparency in its implementation by organizations such as ActionAid Nigeria.

The AfDB said Nigeria’s wheat cultivation increased from 11,820 hectares in 2021 to nearly 400,000 hectares by 2025 and yields increased by 30%, pushing up the country’s domestic wheat production from less than 1% of national demand to 20% — about 1.12 million tonnes, worth over $500 million.

But according to ActionAid Nigeria, the project, though well-intentioned, needs “far more evidence-based assessment to distinguish verified outcomes from competing claims.”

Ms. Suwaiba Muhammad-Dankabo, the organization’s deputy country director, said the program has limited data transparency, “raising concerns about overall effectiveness, inclusiveness and accountability of the program.”

“When public funds of this scale are deployed, citizens and farmers have a right to know,” she said. “It is the responsibility of civil society organizations like ours to ensure that official narratives are tested against the lived realities of people on the ground.” 

Abubakar Kyari, Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, said the NAGS-AP subsidy scheme is an innovative initiative that promises “to make significant strides in Nigeria’s wheat production and ultimately contributing to a more food-secure and prosperous nation.”

“It places strong emphasis on input quality, traceability and transparent delivery systems, ensuring that every farmer receives the right inputs at the right time to achieve higher productivity and better returns,” Kyari said.

Both the ministry and AfDB said at least 25,000 jobs have been created with an estimated $30 million injected into Nigeria’s wheat market through private investments as wheat milling companies rolled out guaranteed purchase agreements with farmer cooperatives, giving farmers “reliable markets as the use of digital systems cut through the distribution problems that had held things back for decades.”

A team of Nigerian government officials admiring a wheat crop on a farm.

Climate change impact

Nigeria, through the NAGS-AP project, has attempted to mitigate the effects of climate change such as increasing desertification by importing and distributing heat-tolerant wheat seed from Mexico that is adaptable to the West African country’s climatic conditions.

One example of how Nigeria has been impacted by climate change is the falling water levels in Lake Chad basin, a key water source in the key producing areas to the northwest. This prompted the government to seek the inclusion of heat-tolerant wheat seeds in the national supply chain.

Other initiatives to increase local wheat production include the Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP), which is a credit scheme spearheaded by Nigeria’s apex monetary authority, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), to boost Nigeria’s agricultural sector and end reliance on food imports for national food security.

The program entails provision of farm inputs to smallholder farmers to boost production of commodities, stabilization of inputs, supply to agricultural processors and tackling the country’s negative balance of payments on food commodities. 

In 2015, CBN included wheat in the list of commodities to benefit from the APB scheme in which the wheat producers deliver their harvest to wheat millers for cash equivalent to the farmer’s account.

Meanwhile, CBN provides financing through the Micro Small and Micro Enterprise Development Fund at 9% interest rate and coordinates the entire program while serving as the secretariat, according to official reports.

Some of the partners in the implementation of APB include Nigeria Incentive-based Risk Sharing for Agricultural Lending, which is providing technical assistance, and Nigerian Agricultural Insurance Corporation for insurance coverage.

The bank said inclusion of wheat in the ABP program is meant to facilitate import substitution, eliminate dependence on imported wheat, and promote self-sufficiency in the wheat value chain in Nigeria through financing of domestic wheat production and strengthening the integration of wheat farming with Nigeria’s cereal grain millers.

It said the strategy includes “eliminating importation of wheat by financing local wheat production and facilitating offtake, ensuring availability of high yield seeds by financing seed multiplication and the establishment of seed ripple centers, expanding land under cultivation for wheat to meet the nation’s total demand, and pursuing collaboration with key stakeholders in the wheat value chain for sustainability of local production.”

CBN also has been working with the Flour Millers Association of Nigeria (FMAN) and Wheat Farmers Association of Nigeria (WFAN) to promote local wheat production through the state-driven backward integration policy, which encourages flour milling companies to invest in backward integration, such as investing in wheat production, as a business diversifying strategy to reduce reliance on imports. 

The partnership was formed in response to the flour millers’ concerns about market challenges such as scarcity of foreign exchange, currency devaluation, which increases the cost of production despite the existence of the government-backed backward integration policy, which encourages importing millers in Nigeria to support domestic wheat production.

Despite the push to expand local wheat production, Nigeria is still dependent on foreign markets for the supply of up to 98% of its domestic wheat demand with Canada, Australia, Russia, the United States and Black Sea countries being the key suppliers.

Flour millers, especially the country’s five largest companies, which have a combined 96% stake in Nigeria’s milling industry, engage in blending of low-priced wheat imports with high-quality supplies as an option of reducing flour prices.

Trade troubles

Nigeria’s dependence on wheat imports, especially from Russia and Ukraine, was put to test when the global wheat supply market was disrupted by the conflict between the two countries a few years ago. The invasion of Ukraine by Russia pushed to the top of the agenda Nigeria’s long-held desire to revamp local production, including an on-off use of protective trade policies such as imposition of import tariffs and incentivizing domestic wheat farming.

For instance, Nigeria has been imposing a 5% import tariff on wheat plus a 15% levy, which it said goes to the national wheat development program. Trade restrictive measures, though meant to encourage domestic wheat production, have at times been seen as constraints in the growth of the Nigerian wheat market as they lead to increased production costs, which leads to high prices for the country’s staples such as bread, semolina, pasta and other wheat flour-based products.

Furthermore, Nigeria is still grappling with insecurity in some of the wheat-producing regions, especially in the north where military operations by the Islamic group Boko Haram have hampered effective farming activities, constraining availability of locally sourced wheat.

Kyari recently said the Nigerian government is committed to the implementation of “a comprehensive agricultural renewal plan anchored on mechanization, input access, credit expansion, post-harvest management, and strategic partnerships to unlock productivity across value chains.”

To achieve this ambitious goal for the country’s wheat market, the government will need to execute these stated goals, starting with concrete steps in addressing insecurity in the north, the high cost of farm inputs and having a stable fiscal and trade policy in place for the long term.