Sotonye Anga: Positioning Nigeria as a Global Powerhouse in Agriculture

Sotonye Anga is an agribusiness strategist and enterprise development expert with corporate experience spanning 2 decades in plantation development, export of agricultural commodities and trade consultancy across Africa, Asia and Europe. He is passionate about agriculture as a business, and is the managing director of Universal Quest Nigeria Limited, an Agribusiness company. His presentations on Agriculture have a record of over 100,000 online views worldwide, and he recently shared his thoughts with Connect Nigeria. Who is your target audience?  First Nigerians, and then others Why do you do what you do?  I am passionate about what I do. This is why I have remained in the Agric sector for 2 decades, having made losses and profit. I have seen the different sides of Agribusiness and I choose to remain in Agric. Nigeria was once an Agricultural giant. In your opinion, what factors were responsible for the decline we have witnessed? It’s simple, from the day oil was discovered at Oloibiri in Bayelsa State, the moment the Government of Nigeria began to receive export proceeds from crude oil sale, Nigeria got distracted and lost focus on Agriculture and now, today, we import rice, tomatoes, sugar and if allowed we will import every food we consume locally. However, there is hope for Nigeria, we have to diversify our economy from a mono-product base and quickly build our Agriculture so as to reduce unemployment, ensure food security and feed other nations. How can the average Nigerian, especially young unemployed graduates, play a role in the ongoing Agricultural revolution?  The agricultural transformation agenda will achieve 20 million metric tons of food production into our food system and create 3.5 million jobs by 2015, so I expect our youths to get at least 80% of these jobs. To achieve this, we have to really work at it and attract our young stars into agribusiness. So all Nigerians have the task to speak up and encourage youth employment in Agriculture. We have to as a nation ensure that our youths have the right platform and enabling system to allow them meaningfully engage in Agriculture. Sotonye Anga is the Coordinator -agribusiness and youth empowerment- Community of Agricultural Stakeholders of Nigeria (CASON). You can read his presentation, Repositioning Nigeria as a Global Powerhouse in Agriculture here.