Israel and Nigerian agriculture

Last week, the Israeli ambassador to Nigeria reportedly revealed plans by the Israeli embassy in Nigeria to establish an economic platform in Nigeria. This platform is to be set up for the purpose of unearthing business opportunities in Nigeria and connecting Nigerian and Israeli businessmen and prospective investors. Speaking to the need to promote bilateral relations and balance trade, the ambassador averred that the Nigerian economy possessed enormous potentials and was laden with great prospects for investors.

The significance of Israel for most Nigerians is seen primarily as a religious one, and no less because many Nigerians go there on pilgrimage. But Israeli-Nigerian relations are far more extensive than annual pilgrimages, religious apotheoses and ethereal kindred spirits. Indeed, Israel has been on the Nigerian development scene as long as the country has existed as an independent nation. In fact, in 1958, the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, entered into an agreement with Gabriel Akinola Deko, the then regional minster for agriculture, for the purposes of fostering a development-oriented relationship between the two countries. In the years that followed, many farmers from Nigeria went to Israel to learn improved farming techniques which would improve Nigerian agriculture. In turn, Israeli experts were sent to Nigeria to promote agricultural modernisation as well as improve key fields such as agriculture, education, commerce and technology. This continued until the mid-70s when relations between the two countries were strained as a result of the Yom Kippur War. In later decades, Nigeria and Israel began to recreate their symbiotic relations. In the past decade especially, Israel’s interest in Nigeria has deepened, with Nigeria being Israel’s second largest export market in Africa. In 2009, Nigeria and Israel entered into another agreement, which focused on boosting trade between the two countries. It was not surprising that agriculture featured prominently in this pact.

Agriculture continues to play a major role in Israeli-Nigeria relations. Every now and then, an Israeli government representative affirms the country’s interest in Nigeria’s agricultural development. Israeli private-sector companies have also become interested parties, investing in various projects and forming public-private partnerships for agricultural development. In 2011, the then Israeli ambassador to Nigeria advised the Nigerian government to take mechanised agriculture seriously and invest in the agricultural labour force, as the sector was the country’s lifeline. He also admonished Nigeria to follow Israel’s example of self-sufficiency with enough agricultural produce to export lucratively. This conviction saw the birth of the Irrigation is Life scheme – a drip irrigation farming project in Lapai-Gwari in Niger State sponsored by the Israeli embassy. In the same year, another Israeli initiative, Green 2000, took it upon itself to help Nigeria reduce its dependence on agricultural imports. However, their work has not been unsolicited, as states such as Plateau have contracted them to intervene in the agricultural sector. The intervention plan includes the establishment of agronomic education centres where farmers can obtain agricultural equipment and relevant training towards the improvement of their crop yield, farm productivity and overall practice. These centres may also include model farms for farms who need more apprenticeship/field practice.

And then in February of this year, the federal government through the Ministry of Water Resources signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the LR Group, an Israeli agricultural firm. The MOU was for a graduate irrigation-farming scheme, which would see 400 trained graduates attached to irrigation farm settlements at Niger State’s Gurara Dam. The scheme is to create a wealth of benefits for these settlements and their residents as well as foster the growth of agro-processing and industry. To this end, the LR Group pledged $40 million – half of the funds entailed for the project. This project is based on an agricultural model that has been adopted in Israel, which uses the village/country settlements as the cradle for agro-economic development.

The iteration of this model in Nigeria would entail building villages that accommodate an average of 200 families who are focused on agriculture, and ensuring adequate water supply and agricultural equipment and support are provided for this enterprise. The second part focuses on engendering veritable agro-processing and industry within the settlements. In addition, storage houses and livestock farms would be established. This would not only diversify and strengthen the value chain, it would also ensure employment and engagement at every point in the sector. In a community where maize is grown, for example, the output would include the maize crop, as well as fodder from the corn for livestock; slaughter houses and packaging houses for the meat; processing centres for the corn flour and starch and dairy farm products; and some distribution mechanism to enable these finished products reach large markets. This individual-community farm-industry model has been touted as a silver bullet that can ignite holistic, sustainable development for farmers and their communities.

While the impact of all these projects is beyond the scope of this article, it behoves agricultural stakeholders from the Nigerian civil society to descry initiatives like these throughout Nigeria’s history and generally assay their relevance to the sector. This would include ascertaining whether the farmers who go to Israel generally return, and with fresh and unique expertise, and what their contributions and experiences in the aftermath of their return have been. This is because realising the dream of agricultural transformation will depend in part on how well Nigeria is exploiting its economic relationships with other countries, and whether these agreements are truly win-win, putting the country on the path to sustainable development. More importantly, transformation will depend on how willing Nigeria is to embrace innovation and promote the proliferation of cutting-edge, mechanised techniques on the farm as well as solid extension services for farmers so that they can feed the population at home and keep up with their competitors in the global market. Agro-processing will also be a game-changer with vast implications for the current trend of importing processed foods. At any rate, one thing is clear at this point: some Israeli tents now dot the Nigerian agricultural landscape.

Obasi is a syndicated columnist, co-founder of the Youth Consortium for Progress and one of the program managers for the Harambe Incubator for Sustainable and Rural Development (HISARD).

tobasi@harambenigeria.org

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