and home-grown Anchor Borrowers’ scheme in the rice value chain.
The Foreign Affairs Service (FAS) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) indicated this in its August 2020 report. Similarly, the National Bureau of Statistics’ (NBS’) Top Products by Imports and
Exports for Q1 2020 recent report showed that though Nigeria’s total export value decreased by 14.42% in Q1, 2020 compared to the value recorded in Q4, 2019,
the value of agricultural exports grew 85.36% in Q1, 2020 compared to Q4, 2019 and 46.76% compared to Q1, 2019
good fermented cocoa beans were exported mainly to The Netherlands (valued at N16.5 billion) and Germany (valued at N6.6 billion).
Superior raw cocoa beans were also exported mainly to The Netherlands at a value of N11.2 billion.
Netherlands buys our cocoa, and will sell us chocolates, beverages and other foods for 10 times the price.
Bitter leaf is an indigenous African plant; which grows in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa
It is a very important protective food and useful for the maintenance of health and prevention & treatment of various diseases
Its chemical constituents
possess a potent anti-parasitic, anti-tumour, and bactericidal effect. bitter leaf is mainly employed as an agent in treating schistsomiasis, which is a disease caused by parasitic worms
Its also useful in the treatment of diarrhoea and general physical malaise
Remedies made from bitter leaf are used in treating several common ailments in sub- Saharan Africa, including fever, different kinds of intestine complaints, & parasite-induced diseases like malaria
Bitter leaf also helps to cleanse such vital organs of the body like the liver
Banks were (& are) the biggest obstacle to the full functionality of mobile money in Nigeria today
The biggest fear of banks is telcos being allowed to enter the field of banking
Telcos are already huge institutions.
Adding banking to their bottomline would make them bigger
than banks and thus make banks more susceptible to being taken over by telcos or their banking subsidiaries
Over the years, to neutralize the challenges posed by mobile money, banks adopted most of the mobile money innovations in use in other African countries
Mobile money is
a uniquely African innovation.
So Nigerian banks adopted USSD banking, agency banking, and POS terminals
All this made the Nigerian banking system appear very advanced (indeed it is compared to other more developed countries )
TSA, BVN and NIN took plenty of guts and steely resolve to pull through
The border closure leading to massive growth in the domestic price value chain was also another unpopular policy that eventually paid off just in the nick of time
The cashless policy spearheaded by the currency redesign is also another masterstroke (I admit I briefly lost focus of the objectives) that has taken his steely resolve to push through
Today he is hugely unpopular for this policy thrust, but I'm confident that we'll all come
round
Achieving the elusive cashless financial system has seemed like a chimera in Nigeria for over a decade
But as usual it has taken crisis to convince investors (telcos, fintech startups, etc) that the time is ripe to deploy resources towards this potentially huge niche