With food security now an issue, I hope President Tinubu realises he needs to include fruits in any response plans

Ayo Akinfe

[1] With hyper-inflation pushing the price of basic foodstuffs beyond the reach of most Nigerians, the Tinubu administration needs to come up with a new National Food Security Plan. I take the view that fruit cultivation should be a central part of such a programme

[2] Fruit is one area where we are sitting on a potential gold mine as nothing stops the sector from matching the $30bn or so Nigeria realises from the sale of crude oil pre-coronavirus

[3] Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of agbalumo, the fifth largest producer of plantains, the sixth largest producer of papaya, the seventh largest producer of pineapples and the tenth largest mango producer. All of these can be processed into a variety of products which Nigeria should be supplying the world market with

[4] Let us start off with fruit juices. Do you know that the global fruit and vegetable juice market is expected to be worth $257bn by 2025. Now, we have ask ourselves what Nigeria’s annual share of this $257bn will be. I would settle for 20%, which is about $50bn

[5] There are a whole range of uses we can put these fruits to. We can process them into tinned fruit, make wines and spirits from them, manufacture animal feed and of course just sell into the fresh fruit market

[6] Already, I understand that a group of Nigerians have come up with a plan to produce an agbalumo wine. There is no reason why Nigeria should not manufacture a range of fruit alcoholic beverages sold worldwide in retail outlets and off-licences

[7] For every fruit we grow, we should have a four-pronged approach. Produce fresh fruit, manufacture a fruit juice, brew an alcoholic beverage and come up with a tinned product. I fail to see how this will not generate at least $30bn a year

[8] Given that fruits are tropical products, we have an inbuilt advantage here. Temperate countries cannot grow fruits like us and we also have the advantage of having a large number of hands for the labour-intensive process of fruit picking

[9] As a starting point, we need to gather data on what our fruit output is. We can then talk of expanding output and of course, move on to the main issue of processing, packaging and marketing. We should have a special brand of products

[10] To start off with, what I have in mind is a mega fruit producer and processor that is vertically integrated right from farmer to brewery. Maybe we call this conglomerate Azikiwe Enterprises and it produces unique drinks which we could name maybe Sango, Aboki, Izom, Nna, etc, we could be on to a winner here