Is there any reason why one Nigerian state government does not float a fruit company in which it holds say a 30% stake and sets out an ambitious agenda that looks like this

Ayo Akinfe

[1] Our Nigerian Fruit Company will aim to generate at least $50bn annually in foreign exchange earnings. We will own a 30% stake in the venture, with the private sector accounting for the remaining 70%

[2] This company will buy fruits from all over Nigeria and act as a national clearing house, kind of similar to what Alhassan Dantata did with the Kano groundnut pyramids. Our purchases will include oranges, mangoes, pineapples, papaya, bananas, tangerines, etc

[3] Nigeria is the world’s largest producer of agbalumo, the fifth largest producer of plantains, the sixth largest producer of papaya, the seventh largest producer of pineapples and the tenth largest mango producer. We will process all of these fruits in Nigeria and export finished by-products

[4] Do you know that the global fruit and vegetable juice market is expected to be worth $257bn this year? Now, we have ask ourselves what Nigeria’s annual share of this $257bn will be. I would settle for 20%, which is about $50bn

[5] There are a whole range of uses we can put these fruits to. We can process them into tinned fruit, make wines and spirits from them, manufacture animal feed and of course just sell into the fresh fruit market

[6] Already, a group of Nigerians have come up with a plan to produce an agbalumo wine. There is no reason why Nigeria should not manufacture a range of fruit alcoholic beverages sold worldwide in retail outlets and off-licences

[7] For every fruit we grow, we should have a four-pronged approach. Produce fresh fruit, manufacture a fruit juice, brew an alcoholic beverage and come up with a tinned product. I fail to see how this will not generate at least $30bn a year

[8] Given that fruits are tropical products, we have an inbuilt advantage here. Temperate countries cannot grow fruits like us and we also have the advantage of having a large number of hands for the labour-intensive process of fruit picking

[9] As a starting point, we need to gather data on what our fruit output is. We can then talk of expanding output and of course, move on to the main issue of processing, packaging and marketing. We should have a special brand of products. At the moment we should be thinking of the most catchy names we can come up with to woo international buyers

[10] What I have in mind is a fruit producer and processor that is vertically integrated right from farmer to brewery. Maybe if we called it say Azikiwe Enterprises and it produced unique drinks which we could name maybe Sango, Aboki, Izom, Nna, etc, we could be on to a winner here

ayoakinfe@gmail.com