Nigeria consumes 2.3 million tons of tomatoes annually, but because of outdated agricultural techniques, the country has been struggling to meet consumer demand and often has to rely on importing the vegetable.
Now that’s about to change as Africa’s richest man Aliko Dangote has unveiled a greenhouse nursery in Kano, the country’s second-largest city, to supply the best quality tomato seedlings to Nigerian farmers.
Using some of the latest planting technologies, the greenhouse has the capacity to process 350 million tons of hybrid tomato seedlings per season enabling the planting of 12,000 hectares of tomato farm, significantly improving crop yields.
On top of that, the nursery will produce the highest quality tomato seedling available, enabling farmers to earn more income from selling higher volumes of harvests each season.
With such revolutionary technologies in place, the country is now on the trajectory of being self-sufficient in tomato production as well as exporting the surplus to the rest of the continent.
