Tapping into growing demand for high energy nutritious foods
There is a demand that has been created by the United Nations World Food Programme and the Federal Government of Nigeria’s attempt to get high energy foods to children, especially the less privileged ones in order to end malnutrition.
To meet this demand, private sector players plan to produce about $300 million (N50bn) of sorghum annually. Speaking recently at the World Economic Forum Africa held in Abuja, Sani Dangote, chief executive, Dansa Foods, said the company was ready to produce up to 1.3 million metric tons of sorghum, which would be combined with soya beans and a little sugar as high energy nutritious foods. With current international price of sorghum at about $232 per tons, this amounts to over $300 million annually.
Dangote also noted that large volumes of food were being bought by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which aims at fighting hunger worldwide, saying “if they are ready to take certain volume, then we will produce something greater so as to also meet the need of Nigerian consumers. The Federal Government can also order for their own school feeding programme, but our main focus is to produce for commercial purposes.”
He further said: “We could encourage farmers to produce as there are opportunities for uptake and we have to work out the scheme on pricing to keep the farmers in business and make the farmers go beyond subsistence.”
He then said that other investors could be encouraged to come in after Dansa Foods had jump-started the programme. According to him, about 9 million children under six years would be fed about 100 grammes of high nutritious foods per day under the Federal Government’s feeding programme and this would increase as population increases. “We have to also formulate, based on what people want and based on food attitudes. I believe we can do even more with these high energy foods,” Dangote explained further.
Speaking earlier on the theme, ‘Combating the scourge of malnutrition in Africa’ at this WEFA session, Akinwunmi Adesina, minister of agriculture and rural development, said malnutrition was the cause of 45 percent of deaths in children under five years old, about 3.1 million children each year.
Adesina then said: “A major reason for high malnutrition in Africa is the poor performance of agriculture – the main source of livelihoods for majority of the poor. For way too long, agriculture has been treated as a development sector, as a way to manage, not eliminate, poverty. To turn things around, we must end treating agriculture as a development programme, and start seeing agriculture as a money-making business.”
He further said: “Today, over 90 percent of the high-energy foods distributed in Africa by the World Food Programme (WFP) are sourced from Asia. This must change, as imported high-energy foods are not always culturally acceptable, takes a long time to arrive, are expensive, exports jobs out of Africa and do not benefit African farmers or the private sector.”
He added: “The crops required to produce high-energy foods are sorghum, or maize and soybeans, all of which grows in abundance in Africa. And so, Africa must look inwards and take advantage of its own grains and private sector to produce all the high-energy foods it needs. Nigeria has recently engaged with the WFP to turn this around. Our goal is to become the largest producer of high-energy foods in Africa. Dansa Foods, part of the Dangote conglomerate, is putting up investments to develop Africa’s largest high-energy food plant in Nigeria.”
He also said Syngenta, an international organisation, had been conducting trials of high-yielding sorghum varieties in Nigeria that have brought about astonishing results. Speaking on the government’s school feeding programmes, which focuses on nutrient rich crops grown by farmers within their localities, he said it opened up huge institutional markets for farmers’ crops, while feeding their children with healthy school meals.
“Government tax incentives should be given to companies to incorporate bio-fortified crops into their food chains, in addition to the regular fortification of foods,” Adesina added.
Onyebuchi Chukwu, the minister of health, also at the forum, said proper nutrition would reduce child mortality by 50 percent, saying soon, President Goodluck Jonathan would launch a programme on scaling up of nutrition. “We need to work with private sector,” Onyebuchi said, promising to “support all initiatives on bio-fortification.”
Kolawole Jamodu, president, Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN), said the association would soon sign a MoU with the Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development on this initiative, which provides jobs for 35,000 farmers
Larry Umunna from the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition said the alliance believed in using the market to find sustainable solution to malnutrition.