Southwest Nigeria: A Growing Opportunity for Horticulture
Southwest Nigeria is emerging as a key player in the country’s horticulture sector, offering immense potential to meet the increasing demand for fresh vegetables in its rapidly expanding urban centers. Beyond feeding its local markets, the region is well-positioned to supply other states and even neighboring countries, strengthening its role in regional food security.
This report explores how Southwest Nigeria can bridge the gap in the nation's food system, which is under pressure to provide healthier diets to a booming population. With the Netherlands actively investing in Nigeria’s horticulture sector - particularly in states known as the vegetable basket of the country - there is a unique opportunity to drive sustainable growth, improve supply chains, and enhance year-round access to nutritious produce.
Key factors contribute to this emerging potential
With wider adoption of agricultural innovations, Southwest Nigeria can serve as a year-round alternative supply source to the North, ensuring consumers have continuous access to fresh, healthy produce while stabilizing prices. The region is home to some of Nigeria’s most commercially advanced, educated, and digitally adept states, creating a strong foundation for agribusiness development.
Although supply chains remain underdeveloped, wet season production already supports portions of the region’s urban markets, with significant room for growth to keep pace with rising demand. Additionally, the region benefits from relatively good infrastructure, including road networks and port access, making distribution more efficient. Perhaps most importantly, Lagos, as a major economic hub, drives demand across the region, setting quality standards and influencing horticultural market trends year-round.
With these factors in place, Southwest Nigeria has the potential to transform into a thriving horticultural powerhouse, providing fresh produce to millions while unlocking economic opportunities for farmers, businesses, and investors alike.
Where is the sector now?
Despite this potential, the regional horticulture sector is still in its nascent stage due to;
- Structural under-investment by the public sector in previous years both in absolute terms (e.g. lack of support services to producers, tax breaks, etc.) and in relative terms (higher investment into the sector in the Northern states, especially Kano, Kaduna and Plateau States).
- With the exception of a small portion of the retail sector it remains informal, unregistered and, on the producer side, subsistence-oriented.
- Few banks choose to allocate much of their portfolio to the agriculture sector, but if they do, prefer those companies higher up the supply chain, while investments are especially needed at producer-level to extend harvest seasons.
What are the next steps to developing the sector?
There is no silver bullet to addressing the growing pains in the sector. But feedback with actors along the supply chains, support services and financial sector during workshops consistently highlighted that there is
- An interest and largely overlapping regional vision for developing the sector in the long term
- A large informal network of collaboration and – to varying degrees – trust across these actors
- A need for greater coordination for these different actors to understand their role in developing the sector.
Contact
For more information about this sector or any other agricultural questions feel free to contact us via acc-lvvn@minbuza.nl.