Nigeria could be getting a few thousand people off its job-seeker roaster when its latest rice mill comes on stream. The facility, to be built by Darma Rice Mill, could create up to 5,000 jobs when it is fully functional.
It could also help encourage local farmers to grow more rice and plug the country’s vast deficit in the supply of the crop. As much as 600,000 extra tonnes of rice could be added to the nation’s annual supplies if current plans for the production centre are realized.
In an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), Darma Rice Mill’s executive director, Mr. Fahad Mangal, explained that the mill would cost an estimated $50 million (about ₦15.2 billion) to construct.
He also revealed that the project initiators had been in touch with local farmers in Katsina, where the mill will be sited, and had provided loans to them to farm the paddy fields from which the mill’s rice would be sourced.
“Apart from that, there is available paddy rice all over the country, especially in the neighbouring states like Kano, Zamfara, and Jigawa,” Mangal said in his interview with NAN which happened over the weekend.
The company determines that it could target a large northern market for rice, which is concentrated in three big cities- Kano, Kaduna, and Abuja. Mangal reckons that these three cities present a potential market of about 10 million people for its product,
News reports quote the executive director as saying that the project could contribute to the Federal Government’s ongoing drive to make Nigeria self-sufficient in the production of rice. Darma could be working towards hitting peak capacity within the next two or three years if Mangal’s statements mirror the project’s execution in the coming months.
According to him, the current plan was to bring the facility on stream in two phases. First, a 300,000 tonne capacity production mill would be ready to commence operations by the second quarter of 2020; a 300,000 tonne increase in capacity would follow “immediately after.”
Nigeria is Africa’s largest consumer of rice and one of the crop’s biggest markets on the planet. It does produce a fair amount itself- about 5.8 million tonnes in 2017 –but it also imports a sizeable lot to make up for the gap in the supply of rice domestically. The US Department of Agriculture has forecast a 13 % jump in Nigeria’s rice imports this year, which would make it the world’s second-biggest importer of the produce just behind China.
The directors at Darma will be hoping that the output from their rice mill will help reduce the huge import bill which Nigeria currently pays to feed its rice-craving citizens.
References
Bloomberg
Punch
Featured image source: AIT
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