By Ese Ufuoma
Nigeria is losing an estimated $10 billion every year to post-harvest losses, according to the Minister of Agriculture, Senator Abubakar Kyari. From tomatoes and cassava to grains and yams, millions of tonnes of food never make it from farms to markets or dinner tables.
The reason is simple but costly: poor storage facilities, bad roads, weak processing capacity, unreliable electricity, and limited access to cold chain systems. For the country’s millions of smallholder farmers who produce most of the food Nigerians eat, these losses mean wasted effort and reduced income.
Each harvest season, farmers watch helplessly as their produce goes bad before buyers arrive. Without proper storage, fresh crops rot within days. The result is lower profit for farmers, higher food prices for consumers, and increased pressure to import food.
Agricultural experts warn that unless Nigeria fixes this, producing more food won’t solve hunger. As one analyst put it, “We can’t feed ourselves if half of what we grow goes to waste.”
Some of the worst-hit value chains are tomatoes, grains, cassava, and vegetables. In the northern region, for instance, farmers in states like Kano and Jigawa lose up to half their tomato harvest because they can’t keep them fresh. In the South, yams and cassava suffer during transport due to poor roads and lack of drying or processing centres.
Experts from the Nigerian Stored Products Research Institute (NSPRI) estimate that reducing these losses by even 30% could feed millions and boost rural incomes significantly.
Efforts To Tackle The Problem
The government and private sector are slowly stepping up. One of the most ambitious efforts so far is the Nigeria Postharvest Systems Transformation Programme (NiPHaST), a 10-year plan to modernise the country’s storage infrastructure and cut food waste estimated at N3.5 trillion yearly.
In September 2025, the federal government launched the NiPHaST. It’s part of President Bola Tinubu’s “Renewed Hope Agenda,” aiming to slash losses and transform the food system.
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“NiPHaST will stabilise food prices, improve storage systems, and achieve national food sovereignty,” Kyari announced.
Phase one involves household silos, community warehouses, and cold rooms, while later stages aim to revive 33 strategic grain silos through public – private partnerships.
Industry analysts say boosting storage efficiency could raise output value by nearly 1,900%, offering a dramatic boost for farmers and the economy.
The programme promotes community warehouses, cold rooms, and modern silos under public-private partnerships. In addition, 17 federal silos have been handed to private operators to improve access to storage and aggregation centres where produce can be dried, cleaned, and bagged before being stored.
Several Nigerian startups are also rising to the challenge. Still, the scale of Nigeria’s cold storage gap is huge. The Organisation for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa (OTACCWA) estimates that the country needs about 5,000 cold trucks and 100 large cold rooms of at least 500-ton capacity each to tackle losses nationwide.
While the technology exists, access to finance remains a major roadblock. Many of these solutions depend on donor support or pilot grants. Few are commercially self-sustaining because of high power costs and low purchasing power among farmers.
Meanwhile, at the policy level, there’s still no clear incentive or subsidy structure for cold chain infrastructure. Experts say better coordination between federal and state governments is needed, along with policies that support renewable-powered storage systems in rural areas.
The Raw Materials Research and Development Council (RMRDC) has called for special intervention funds to help farmers access local processing technologies, especially for perishable crops.
However, countries like Kenya, Ghana, and India have made progress by investing heavily in cold storage and farmer cooperatives. For example, India’s use of mobile cold storage trucks and rural warehousing networks has reduced post-harvest losses in fruits and grains. Nigeria can borrow a page from these examples by scaling up solar-powered solutions that fit its rural realities.
Furthermore, experts believe that cutting post-harvest losses by 50% by 2030 is possible, but only if the government, investors, and farmers work together. Key steps include:
- Expanding solar-powered cold storage and mobile drying units near production hubs.
- Improving rural road networks to speed up delivery to markets.
- Encouraging cooperative-owned warehouses to share storage costs.
- Providing credit and tax incentives for agritech companies.
In conclusion, if achieved, these interventions could save billions, improve food supply, and create jobs across the agricultural value chain.
By tackling post-harvest losses head-on, Nigeria can take a bold step toward true food security, one that values not just production, but preservation.
