Facts about Tomato farming in Nigeria

Nigeria can lead the world in tomato production!

Many Nigerian successful entrepreneurs/ financial institutions, banks, private equity are looking for a way to divest their businesses. The current crisis in the Oil sector makes it perfectly clear, that food is more important than anything else. It is also obvious that the Agri-sector in Nigeria has been neglected for decades, and that the country can not provide enough to feed the 200 mil population, let alone create export.

Nigeria is sub-Saharan Africa’s biggest producer of tomatoes.

However, despite Nigeria’s strong position in tomato production, it still spends up to $500 million – every year – to import tomato products (especially purees, pastes and canned tomatoes), making Nigeria one of the biggest importers of tomato paste in the world. More than 50 percent of tomatoes harvested every year in Nigeria never make it to the market. Due to poor storage and a lack of processing options, a lot of tomatoes harvested in Nigeria is wasted.

Another reason is, in most parts of Africa, tomatoes are mainly grown by small-scale rural farmers who have limited access to good seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. They also depend on natural rainfall to grow their tomatoes which makes the harvests unpredictable and inconsistent.

The Netherlands has become an agricultural giant by showing what the future of farming looks like. The Dutch greenhouses sector grew into a extreme efficient business with the highest yield per M2 in the world and our partners want to share that knowledge with you.

CAB van der Vinne has been asked by a group of Dutch specialist companies to identify potential Nigerian business people that have interest in becoming successful in the Agrisector. These Dutch companies have an impressive trackrecord in other parts of Africa, but Nigeria has always been difficult. Many visits from and to Nigeria, meetings with political figures, trade missions led to a lot of work but limited results.

The focus is on Tomato farming in Greenhouse facility and we have developed a complete 30,000 M2 start-up concept fit for the Nigerian climate. This concept makes it possible for any (unexperienced) entrepreneur to become a successful tomato farmer (as a start) and the business has no limits. Key is to start with the correct greenhouse, design adapted to the location, equipment, irrigation, monitoring tools, fertilizer, seeds, and most important professional “on the ground” management during the start-up of phase 1. 

Proper management of the operations of the Greenhouse Facility requires knowledge of systems operation and plant cultivation. Our partners will organise the management in the first years and train the staff to enable them to run the facilities in due time. The construction and installation of the Greenhouses will be done under Supervision of experts from our partners from the Netherlands using in-house staff of the investor and local experts.