Africa Loses Billions Exporting Raw Farm Produce – Stakeholders

Africa is losing billions of dollars in potential wealth by exporting raw agricultural commodities instead of processing them locally, stakeholders at the Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA) 2026 have said.

They called for a shift from food security to food sovereignty, urging African countries to take greater ownership of agricultural value chains and capture more value from the continent’s abundant farm produce.

The call dominated discussions at the summit, held under the theme, “Building the Next Superpower: Africa’s Food Power Play.” The event attracted over 12,000 participants and set a $300 million investment pipeline target aimed at doubling Africa’s agricultural GDP output.

Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Abubakar Kyari, said Africa possesses about two-thirds of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land but spends more than $100 billion annually on food imports.

Kyari said the continent’s vast agricultural resources would not translate into economic power without investment in processing and other value-adding activities.

“Endowment is not power. Conversion is power. Those are the raw inputs of a superpower: land, people, market. And none of that is in dispute. What is not settled is conversion,” he said.

He said the Federal Government was addressing the gap through initiatives including the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones programme, whose first phase mobilised $520 million in co-financing with development partners across seven states and the Federal Capital Territory.

Kyari urged greater private-sector investment in agricultural processing, storage and logistics, saying government’s responsibility was to create an environment that would make such investments viable.

“Our task in government is to make those investments bankable, not to take your place,” he said.

Minister of State for Agriculture, Senator Aliyu Abdullahi, said food sovereignty should not be misconstrued as a policy of eliminating imports, but as ensuring that countries retain control of their food systems and major sources of nutrition.

“Let us be massively in control of our food chain and caloric sources. That way, we will be producing what we eat and eating what we produce,” he said.

Managing director of Sterling Bank, Abubakar Suleiman, said the continent’s challenge extended beyond agricultural production to ownership of the systems through which farm commodities are processed and marketed.

Using cassava as an example, Suleiman said Nigeria produces more cassava than any other country but accounts for only about two per cent of the global processed cassava market.

“We grow most of it, and we keep almost none of what it is worth. The gap, therefore, is not a farming problem, but one about ownership,” he stated.

Also speaking, Managing Director of Sunbeth Global Concepts, Olasunkanmi Owoyemi, represented by the Head of Sustainable Sourcing, Africa at SFI Agri Commodities, Jason Green, said Africa had for decades remained primarily a supplier of raw agricultural commodities to global markets.

“For too long, Africa has been content to be the world’s farm, whilst others have become the world’s kitchen. The power play this summit calls for is the decision to change that,” he said.

The stakeholders said stronger investment in processing, storage, logistics and other agricultural infrastructure would be critical to enabling African producers to retain more of the economic value generated from the continent’s agricultural resources.