Nigeria Seed Sector Roadmap
The Netherlands Government plans to intensify it bilateral relations with Nigeria in the Agricultural sector amongst other sectors. Following the governments intent, a number of strategic outputs around cooperation between both countries in co-developing the Nigerian seed sector are being formulated and reported. One of such outputs is the National Seed Road Map (NSRM). The NSRM is a strategic policy document that guides stakeholders in the seed sector of Nigeria to work towards an increase in farmers’ access to and use of quality seed of improved varieties.
The document is a critical input to the development of major agricultural policies of the government, guiding the government, stakeholders and development partners in exploring and agreeing on ways to foster the development of the sector in a coordinated, aligned and structured fashion. The NSRM includes a vision, describes current achievements and challenges, and outlines ambitions and strategic innovation pathways contributing to the realization of those ambitions.
Stakeholders in the seed sector include a high and diverse number of government organizations, industry, and knowledge organizations (including research organizations and universities), regulatory bodies, civil society organizations (CSOs) and farmer organizations. There are 314 formally registered seed companies, of which the majority annually process less than 1,000 metric tons of seed of grain crops. These seed companies together with agro-dealers shape the formal and commercial seed system.
Individual and mostly unorganized seed producers, community-based seed production schemes and various types of seed entrepreneurs, like informal seed traders, primarily shape the intermediary and informal seed systems. The Seed Entrepreneurs Association of Nigeria (SEEDAN) is the country’s seed trade association, with 72 seed companies registered as members in 2019. The NSRM as a strategic document identifies challenges that are placed within the six functions of seed sector transformation
- service provision
- seed production
- market development
- revenue generation and reinvestment
- coordination and governance
- regulation and management.
The challenges detailed in the report has been synthesized and transformed into ambitions, which are descriptions of a desired state or outcome of the seed sector transformation process. The collection of ambitions within each of the six core functions mentioned above shape the future vision of the Nigerian seed sector. The aims are for the seed sector to become high performing in ensuring access to good quality seed of improved varieties of all crops for farmers sustainably.
The vision for the seed sector in Nigeria is to be competitive, resilient, profitable, innovative and adaptive, sustainable, inclusive, resistant and transparent.
An assembly of 22 prioritized topics, with their ambitions grouped along the six seed sector performance functions, shapes the response to the NSRM’s guiding question, “Where do we want to go?”
The ambitions that are marked as general, i.e. relevant to the entire seed sector and all crops, are elaborated in the NSRM. However, it should be noted that ambitions can be specific to certain crops or crop groups. The NSRM provides a positive indication for Dutch trade and investment interest in the Nigerian seed system, such harmonized intervention by public, and private actors both within and outside nigeria gives us the impetus to promote the Nigeria seed industry as the next main destination for trade and investment on the African continent.
For more insights contact the Agricultural Advisor in Lagos via e-mail on lag-lnv@minbuza.nl
You can follow this link for the full document.