Improving tomato value chain in Nigeria
This was at a private sector stakeholders’ workshop on market development in the tomato value chain held recently by Growth and Employment in States (GEMS4) – Wholesale/Retail Sector. GEMS 4 is a project funded by the United Kingdom Department For International Development (DFID) in Lagos, Nigeria on recently.
The workshop brought together various stakeholders in the tomato industry to explore ways to develop the tomato value chain in Nigeria.
During the technical and plenary sessions, there were in-depth deliberations on how to unlock financial investments in production, processing, packaging and distribution; improve primary handling operations from farm to processing centers; and improve and expand support services like structuring farmers’ organisations, improving technical and managerial skills, agricultural extension and training, storage and transportation – all within the tomato industry.
During the workshop several business linkages were made between different partners to work collaboratively on different business plans.
Also, issues of Women Economic Empowerment (WEE) and ways to ensure that women get more significant roles to play in developing the sector were also discussed. It came to the fore that in some cases women were known to be ill-informed of the market situations in the sector.
Nigeria is considered the second largest producer of tomato in Africa and 13th in the world but up to 50 percent of tomato produced in the country is lost due to lack of storage and under- developed marketing channels.
Source: businessdayonline.com