The Chief Innovation & Commercialisation Officer at Matna Foods Limited, a Cavista Holding Company, Dr. Tony Bello, in this interview with Raheem Akingbolu, stresses that as the world’s largest producer of cassava, Nigeria possesses a strategic opportunity to transform agricultural production into industrial value creation and export competitiveness. Excerpts:
Nigeria is seeing renewed attention on agriculture as a driver of jobs, food security, and industrial growth. What is driving this shift, and how can it be sustained beyond rhetoric?
Several global and domestic developments have converged to place agriculture back at the center of economic and national policy discussions. The COVID-19 pandemic exposed vulnerabilities in global supply chains and reminded nations that food security is inseparable from national security. The Russia-Ukraine conflict disrupted grain, fertilizer, and energy markets across the world, while continuing geopolitical tensions in the Middle East have reinforced concerns about supply chain resilience, inflation, and economic stability. These events have fundamentally changed how governments, investors, and businesses think about agriculture.
Besides, food security is no longer viewed solely as a social issue. It is increasingly recognised as an economic, industrial, and national security imperative. Countries are realising that dependence on global markets on critical food and agricultural inputs carries risks that extend far beyond agriculture. The ability to feed a nation has become a strategic capability, much like energy security, manufacturing capacity, and technological competitiveness. Nigeria faces its own realities. Rising food inflation, youth unemployment, foreign exchange pressures, insecurity in farming communities, and increasing demand for affordable food have heightened awareness of agriculture’s strategic importance.
The encouraging development is that agriculture is no longer being discussed solely through the lens of farming. Increasing attention is being given to value chains, processing, manufacturing, logistics, exports, and industrial development. This shift is significant because agriculture creates volume, while industrialization creates value. For too long, success was measured primarily by production volumes. Today, the conversation is gradually shifting toward value creation, competitiveness, jobs, and prosperity.
Ultimately, the challenge before Nigeria is not whether agriculture matters. The challenge is whether we can transform agriculture into a sustainable engine of industrialization, job creation, and prosperity. If we succeed, agriculture will become far more than a food security strategy. It will become one of the most powerful drivers of Nigeria’s economic transformation.
Why is agriculture still central to Nigeria’s long-term economic development, despite years of policy discussions around diversification?
Agriculture remains central to Nigeria’s long-term economic development because every prosperous nation must ultimately solve three interconnected challenges: food security, economic security, and industrial security. Agriculture sits at the intersection of all three. While discussions about economic diversification have often focused on reducing dependence on oil and gas, diversification is not simply about creating new sectors. It is about building productive sectors capable of creating jobs, generating wealth, supporting industries, and improving living standards.
Agriculture is uniquely positioned to achieve these objectives, but agriculture alone is not enough. Production alone is not enough. The real objective must be industrialization. Agriculture creates volume, industrialization creates value, markets create revenue, and prosperity emerges when value and revenue are sustained over time. This distinction is critical because prosperity is not measured solely by hectares cultivated or tons harvested. Prosperity is measured by industries built, jobs created, exports expanded, incomes generated, and wealth retained within the economy.
Youth participation in agriculture remains low. What practical changes are needed to make the sector attractive, profitable, and scalable for young Nigerians?
I believe the narrative around youth participation in agriculture has evolved significantly over the past decade. While there is certainly room for improvement, it would be inaccurate to suggest that young people are absent from the sector. In many respects, the foundation for today’s youth engagement was laid during Nigeria’s Agricultural Transformation Agenda under the leadership of Dr. Akinwumi Adesina. One of his most memorable messages was that the future billionaires of Nigeria would emerge not from oil and gas, but from agriculture. That message helped reshape perceptions about the sector and encouraged many young Nigerians to see agriculture as an opportunity rather than a fallback option. Today, evidence of that shift is visible across the ecosystem. Institutions such as Lagos Business School have developed agribusiness management programmes that attract entrepreneurs and professionals seeking opportunities in food and agriculture. The participants in many of these programmes are young business leaders, innovators, and investors who recognize the opportunities emerging across agricultural value chains. Platforms such as LinkedIn have also become vibrant communities where young entrepreneurs are leading conversations around value-chain development, industrialization, investment, innovation, and commercialisation. Many of the most innovative agricultural businesses in Nigeria today are youth-led. Companies and platforms such as Thrive Agric, AFEX, Tomato Jos, ReelFruit, Nuli, Halo Tractor, AER Foods, XPJ, Alana Green, and KADI Xchange demonstrate the growing influence of young entrepreneurs in transforming agricultural value chains.
Cassava is one of Nigeria’s most strategic crops. Beyond food security, what economic and industrial value does it offer?
To understand cassava’s true potential, it helps to look beyond Nigeria. Every major economic region has historically built its food security and industrial development around one or more strategic staple crops. In the United States, wheat and potatoes became platforms for food security and industrial value creation. Across Europe, potatoes and corn played similar roles. In Latin America, maize evolved from a staple crop into an industrial platform supporting food products, ingredients, animal feed, sweeteners, starches, and exports. In Asia, rice has performed a similar function. What these regions have in common is that they did not stop at food security. They transformed staple crops into engines of industrialisation, employment, exports, and economic growth.
Nigeria’s equivalent staple crop is cassava. It remains the country’s most important food-security crop and supports millions of Nigerians through products such as garri, fufu, akpu, lafun, flour, tapioca, and starch. Historically, cassava’s role was associated primarily with subsistence and food security. Today, however, cassava is increasingly emerging as a strategic industrial crop. This is where the real opportunity begins.
Nigeria leads global cassava production, yet much of its value is lost to low processing capacity. Where are the most critical gaps across the value chain, including processing ecosystems such as Matna?
This is, perhaps, one of the most important questions confronting Nigeria’s cassava industry today. The reality is that Nigeria has already won the production race. As the world’s largest producer of cassava, the country consistently produces more than 60 million metric tons annually. The challenge is no longer production.
The challenge is industrialisation. The challenge is transforming production into value, value into revenue, and revenue into sustainable profitability. For many years, conversations about cassava focused primarily on increasing production. Yet production alone does not create prosperity. Prosperity emerges when production is connected to processing, processing is connected to markets, and markets are connected to sustainable demand. This is where many of the gaps in the value chain remain. The industry has invested heavily in production and processing capacity but significantly less in market development, commercialisation, innovation, and ecosystem integration.
The first generation of cassava investors focused largely on processing facilities. Many of those investments struggled because feedstock security was not adequately addressed. The second generation focused on backward integration by combining farming and processing operations. This created a stronger foundation and helped improve supply security. However, much of the industry remained concentrated on producing commodities such as HQCF and native cassava starch. While these products are important, they remain largely commodity products. The greatest opportunity lies further downstream.
One of the most revealing findings from recent industry analyses is that installed processing capacity is not the primary problem. Capacity utilisation is. Across the cassava processing sector, many factories operate significantly below installed capacity.
This means that billions of naira in investments are not generating their full economic potential. Underutilised factories result in higher operating costs, lower returns on investment, and reduced competitiveness. Industrialisation becomes difficult when factories designed to run at 80 or 90 percent utilisation are operating at 20, 30, or 40 per cent.
What role are technology, mechanisation, and recent policy interventions playing in improving cassava productivity and industrial output?
Technology, mechanisation, and policy interventions are becoming increasingly important because industrialisation begins with productivity. No country can build a globally competitive cassava industry with low yields, inefficient farming practices, fragmented supply chains, and inconsistent feedstock supply. The ability to produce, aggregate, transport, process, and commercialize cassava efficiently determines whether industrialisation succeeds or fails. One of the most significant lessons we have learned is that feedstock security cannot be assumed. It must be intentionally built. This is one of the reasons Agbeyewa Farms continues to invest aggressively in large-scale cassava production. From a modest beginning, the company has expanded cultivation to more than 2,800 hectares and is targeting approximately 5,000 hectares of planted cassava. By any measure, Agbeyewa is the largest cassava farming operation in Africa and potentially among the largest integrated cassava production platforms in the world. While many global agricultural enterprises measure landholdings in thousands of acres, Agbeyewa’s scale is increasingly measured in thousands of hectares, reflecting the magnitude of the opportunity before Nigeria’s cassava industry.
However, scale alone is not enough. Productivity matters. This is where technology and research become critical. Agbeyewa continues to work closely with institutions such as the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and other research partners on varietal selection, seed quality, disease resistance, starch content, vigor, and yield improvement. The objective is not simply to plant more cassava. The objective is to plant better cassava.
This year’s theme of World Cassava Day is “From Cassava to Industrialisation, From Industrialization to Prosperity.” What does this transformation require in practical terms?
The theme captures what I believe is the most important economic conversation Nigeria should be having today. The progression from cassava to industrialisation and from industrialisation to prosperity is neither automatic nor inevitable. It requires intentionality. It requires leadership. It requires investment. And most importantly, it requires a fundamental shift in mindset. For decades, agricultural success was often measured by production volumes alone. We celebrated hectares planted, tons harvested, and projects launched. While these remain important indicators, they do not necessarily translate into prosperity. Prosperity emerges when production is connected to value creation, when value creation is connected to markets, and when markets generate sustainable revenue and jobs. The challenge before Nigeria is therefore not simply to produce more cassava. The challenge is to create more value from cassava.
This transformation begins with a mindset shift. We must move beyond seeing cassava as merely a food-security crop and recognise it as an industrial platform. We must move beyond viewing agriculture as a development activity and embrace it as a business, manufacturing, and industrial growth opportunity. Industrialisation requires us to think differently about research, technology, investment, commercialisation, customer needs, exports, and competitiveness.