Nigerians, it seems, love rice – but not their own. According to consultancy Coffey International, of the six million tonnes of rice the nation eats every year, three million are imported, largely from Thailand, India and Vietnam.
The attraction of imported rice is so strong that some producers in Nigeria have been known to falsely label products as foreign to improve sales. To a Nigerian, local rice is poor quality – and the only people who eat it are those who cannot afford anything better.
The cost to Nigeria is not just the $1.9bn paid each year for the imported rice – especially popular among richer urban consumers – but also the impact on the lives of impoverished rice farmers, hundreds of thousands of whom live and work in northern Nigeria, one of the poorest parts of the country. Recent reports of rice past its sell-by date being smuggled in to meet demand in Nigeria add to the growing sense that there is a problem with the rice market that needs to be addressed urgently.
“If you drill down to why there is a negative perception around locally produced rice and people aren’t consuming it, it revolves around quality,” says Busuyi Okeowo, finance manager for GEMS4, a collaborative project between Coffey, the government of Nigeria and the World Bank, funded by the UK’s Department for International Development.
The Nigerian government has announced that it is aiming for rice production to be self-sufficient within three years. Working with farmers and millers will result in “products that are competitive with the imported ones [in terms of quality as well as price] and taste better because they’re fresh,” says Okeowo.
So how does GEMS4 improve the products and lives of rice farmers – and indeed the products and lives of other poor traders it helps across Nigeria? First, it builds connections that can help them sell their product at the best prices and terms; second, it boosts their skills, so they can make the most of their market opportunities. Crucially, there are no handouts; the philosophy, it seems, is to help poorer Nigerians help themselves.
In the case of small-scale rice farmers, the project links them with farm equipment suppliers to help them get access to modern machines – threshing, for instance, is often still done manually. “It’s not just about what happens from the post-harvest point [further down the supply chain] … it’s what happens at the point at which the crops are planted, how they are fed, the processes used and what technologies are involved,” Okeowo explains.
The project also helps rice farmers sell their paddy at higher prices by connecting them with modern mills for processing, rather than the small, “cottage” rice mills the farmers traditionally use, and is working with millers to ensure that the farmers get paid more quickly.
However, Okeowo says, helping farmers and millers to improve the competitiveness of local rice alone will not be enough to ensure demand meets the supply, when the historically poor quality of Nigerian rice has made consumers reluctant to buy it. Changing consumer attitudes will require better marketing and consumer awareness of the finished product. Demand for local rice can be created by helping producers use mass media, mobile technology, social media, and word of mouth, he says.
“We are working with local companies that are going out on radio and delivering campaigns to promote local rice brands,” he explains. Providing continuous support to millers is not sustainable, he argues. Instead: “We’re building their capacity – so they can do it themselves. We sit down and train them to design marketing and branding strategies.”
Another thing GEMS4 has been encouraging rice producers to do is to hold events where the public come along to taste and feel the rice. It’s particularly important to target women, especially mothers, as women shoulder 95% of the responsibility for purchasing food and looking after the nutrition and wellbeing of children, says Aisha Lawal-Ahmed, coordinator of the women’s economic empowerment initiative at GEMS4.
Rice farmers’ problems – connecting with sellers, marketing their products, getting access to modern technology, getting paid quickly and fairly – are echoed across the work of the wide-ranging GEMS4 project as it seeks to make markets work better for the poor.
Connecting with sellers, in fact, is a particular problem for poor women in Nigeria wishing to start businesses. GEMS4 wants to help more women become economically active in ways that fit around their lifestyle and cultural attitudes.
Because of socio-cultural restrictions, in northern Nigeria women’s mobility and entrepreneurial opportunities are limited, explains Lawal-Ahmed. “Husbands might say, ‘fine, you can go out but you have to be back at two to look after the children’. If they don’t leave the home, it doesn’t mean they’re not interested [in business].”
Selling and marketing online works particularly well for these women. “We’ve been running workshops to support women to develop their capacity to set up online shops,” Lawal-Ahmed says. “We’re working with local online trading platforms – which are the equivalent of eBay in the UK – such as Konga.com and Jumia.”
Through these partners, women can sell products, such as leather goods, by uploading details, images and prices to the websites. The partners handle all aspects of buying and selling, couriers are responsible for delivery, and the vendors then pay the site a small percentage of any sale. Both sites are mobile compatible, so it means that women with mobiles – most Nigerians now own one – can run their business from home.
GEMS4 has reached more than 2,000 women with its micro-entrepreneurial training. Away from the online shops, the project has also been creating all-female wholesale buyers clubs. These help women traders club together to buy goods in bulk from wholesalers, cutting their costs and increasing their profits.
Another major challenge the project is trying to address is paying and getting paid efficiently. In other words, without having to carry and store large amounts of cash, or make frequent trips to banks that can be miles away.
Cashless payments via mobile phones, the project believes, will be a big part of the future for Nigerian small businesses. It successfully lobbied the Central Bank of Nigeria to change the rules on mobile payments – a change that it says has impacted about 946,000 mobile money users, including many low-income traders. Previously the most that could be sent by those without bank accounts was just 3,000 Nigerian Naira (about $15) per payment. Accepting the argument that this discouraged use of mobile payments, the bank has now abolished this ceiling.
The project cites the example of a business owner Mr Auwalu from Kaduna state who, before the transaction limits were removed, would travel miles regularly to make withdrawals, transfer cash to or pay suppliers. “This travel was very stressful and time consuming. But with the mobile money service, all my transactions are done in minutes – without the hassle of movement to and from banks,” Auwalu says.
Away from the world of technology, GEMS4 is also helping with more basic business improvements. It has, for instance, trained 2,100 people in good handling of fresh fruit and vegetables. It has also funded 60 members of the Fresh Fruits and Vegetable Dealers Association of Nigeria to become master trainers who can teach these good practices to others in the future. The idea is to train people to handle, store and transport their produce better, as too much is going off or losing value before it gets to the customer.
Vegetable handling seems a long way from the cutting edge use of cashless payments and e-commerce, yet the work of the project suggests both basic skills and new technology will be vital to building a better future for Nigerian small business. Crucial, too, will be building connections between people and organisations that provide better opportunities for the poor who still make up two-thirds of Nigeria’s population.
Content on this page is paid for and provided by Coffey, a sponsor of the Guardian Global Development Professionals Network
