Agrofood Nigeria Highlights €222bn Food Market Potential, Calls For Value Chain Transformation

Stakeholders at the agrofood Nigeria conference has called for transformation of the agricultural value chain to tap into the €222 billion opportunity.

This year’s 11th edition being organised by fairtrade Messe, in conjunction with its local partner Modion Communications, cut across the exhibition sectors, including agro, food and beverage technology, food ingredients, packaging, and food & hospitality, with 137 exhibitors presence for the three days event.

Speaking at the fairtrade Messe GmbH’s 2026 edition of the 11th anniversary of agrofood & plastprintpack Nigeria exhibition and conference held yesterday in Lagos, eminent personalities, including, the governor of Lagos State, Babajide Sanwo-Olu; represented by commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Lagos State, Ruth Abiola Olusanya; first lady, Akwa Ibom State, Helen Eno-Obareki; managing director, Fairtrade Messe, Paul Marz; managing director, Financial Derivatives Company Ltd, Bismarck Rewane; among others emphasised that Nigeria is a key agro-allied nation with immense potential.

Talking about the theme of this year’s conference, ‘Achieving World-Class Food Security in Nigeria’, the key stakeholders explained that it is both timely and imperative, as it speaks directly to the structural realities of our economy and the urgent need to reposition agriculture not merely as a subsistence activity, but as a catalyst for industrial transformation, trade expansion, and inclusive economic growth.

They projected that Nigerian food market is to reach around 222 billion EUR by 2026, with strong annual growth expected in the years ahead.

In his keynote addres, Governor Sanwo-Olu stated that “Lagos is not just Nigeria’s commercial capital, we are Africa’s largest single food consumption market. Our food economy has more than doubled in just six years, rising from N6.5 trillion in 2019 to over N16 trillion today. Lagos alone consumes more than half of all food traded across the entire South-West.”

He added, “and as the state that contributes 22 per cent of Nigeria’s entire GDP, with our own economy projected to approach N66 trillion this year, we are the natural gateway and the biggest, most structured market any serious player in agro-processing, cold chain, packaging, or food technology can ever hope to reach on this continent.”

The managing director, Financial Derivatives Company Limited, Bismarck Rewane spoke about the adverse effects of the Middle East conflict on Nigeria’s agric sector, saying that Nigerians should prepared for the worst to come because of the spiral economic effects on foods locally.

The president of the Organisation for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa (OTACCWA), Mr. Alexander Isong, lamented that cold chain as an industry that has seen very little penetration into the Nigerian economy and thereby it has been unable to enjoy advantages which cold chain brings to it.

According to him, but here is the honest truth: the real bottleneck is no longer on the farm. It is everything that happens after the harvest.

“Last year alone, Nigeria lost between N3.5 trillion and N5 trillion, that is 30 to 40 million metric tonnes of food to post-harvest waste, mainly because of poor storage and broken logistics. On top of that, over 97 per cent of our agricultural exports still leave the country completely unprocessed.”

MAN President highlighted that global hunger remains stubbornly high, stating that available data show that about 733 million people were facing hunger in 2023, according to the United Nations World Food Programme, saying “our primary concern is that the African region is experiencing the most severe hunger.”