Cocoa was one of the main sources of income in Nigeria before Independence, but that changed following the exportation of crude oil in commercial quantities in the 1970s.
Before the rise of crude oil, the agriculture sector was the dominant contributor to domestic output, employment, and foreign exchange earnings.
Looking back to the 1960s, Nigeria was the second largest producer of cocoa and highest source of FX before investments in the oil sector.
Over 50 percent of all exports in the 1970s and over 60 percent in 1980 were made up of cocoa. But during the 1970s, its share steadily decreased, falling from 49 percent in 1989 to 22 percent in 1998.
According to the Observatory of Economic Complexity, Nigeria’s cocoa bean’s net export value from 2000 to 2005 was $1.734 billion; it increased to $3.15 billion from 2006 to 2010, and $5.397 billion from 2010 to 2014, before declining to $3.193 billion from 2015 to 2020.
Nigeria is the fourth largest cocoa producer worldwide, according to World Atlas, with major cocoa-producing states in Ondo, Cross River, Ogun, Akwa Ibom, Ekiti, Delta, Osun, and Oyo.
Many.cocoa processing factories in Nigeria are not functional or produce below capacity. About 90 per cent of the nation’s cocoa beans are exported while about 10 per cent are processed locally.
Between 2015 and 2020, the country was able to increase cocoa production by 25 per cent to 250,000 tonnes, compared to Côte d’Ivoire, which has been able to increase production volume by 33 per cent to 2,105,000 tonnes, and Cameroon, by 32.7 per cent to 280,000 tonnes, data from the International Cocoa Organization (ICCO) show.
Photo by: E V Harris Article: Business Day
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