Nigerian President Bola Tinubu says Africa must end its long-standing dependence on exporting raw cocoa beans and embrace value addition to capture greater benefits from the global chocolate industry.
Speaking at the Africa Cocoa Summit themed “From Bean to Brand” on Tuesday in Abuja, Tinubu said that Africa produced about 70 per cent of global cocoa, but retained barely six cents of every dollar earned from the chocolate industry.
Represented by Nigeria’s Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Abubakar Kyari, Tinubu said: “We gathered in Abuja today not to lament that arithmetic. We gathered to end it.”
Tinubu said that Nigeria would process cocoa beans, manufacture chocolate, build local brands and compete globally instead of exporting raw commodities.
According to him, the value addition is central to the Renewed Hope Agenda and Nigeria’s industrialisation drive.
Tinubu said that investors were developing a 70,000-tonne cocoa processing facility in Shagamu in Ogun State and that Nigeria’s grinding capacity had exceeded 120,000 tonnes yearly.
Earlier, Nigeria’s Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, said that the summit aligned with the ministry’s mandate to build a one trillion-dollar economy by 2030.
Oduwole said that Nigeria earned only a fraction of the value generated from cocoa in spite of contributing significantly to global production.
She said that the Nigerian Government was supporting value addition through manufacturing incentives, investment promotion and stronger collaboration across relevant agencies.
The minister said that the government would also improve market access through existing trade partnerships and the African Continental Free Trade Area.
She urged investors to leverage opportunities across regional and global value chains to unlock the sector’s full potential.
The summit ended with the signing of the Abuja Declaration on Cocoa Value Addition by the participating countries.
In his speech, Nigeria’s Minister of State for Industry, Senator John Enoh, said that the summit marked another step in implementing Nigeria’s Industrial Policy.
Enoh said that the Cocoa Value Addition Alliance would unite Nigeria, Ghana, Côte d’Ivoire and Cameroon, which together account for about 75 per cent of global cocoa production.
He said that the alliance would strengthen regional cooperation and enable producing countries to capture more value from the global cocoa market.
“We are not here to disrupt existing partnerships but to expand them,” Enoh said.
He urged African countries to move beyond exporting raw beans and focus on producing branded cocoa products for global markets.
GIK/APA