For decades, cassava has been one of the most familiar crops in Kogi State. It is cultivated in virtually every local government area, feeds millions of households, provides income to rural families, and supplies countless local processing activities. Yet, despite its ubiquity, cassava has remained largely a subsistence crop, generating only modest returns for those who cultivate it.
This reality stands in sharp contrast to developments elsewhere in the world. Across Asia, cassava has evolved from a traditional food crop into a strategic industrial commodity, supporting billion-dollar industries in starch, ethanol, pharmaceuticals, textiles, livestock feed, paper manufacturing and food processing. Countries such as Thailand and Vietnam have demonstrated that the true economic value of cassava lies not merely in growing it, but in organizing its production, guaranteeing markets, processing it into high-value products and integrating it into international trade.
Kogi State possesses nearly every natural advantage required to replicate this transformation. What it lacks is not fertile land, willing farmers or favourable climatic conditions. Rather, it lacks an integrated policy framework capable of converting abundant agricultural production into sustainable industrial wealth.
This article which will be in parts, proposes that cassava should become the cornerstone of Kogi State’s agricultural industrialisation strategy—not merely as another crop, but as a strategic economic asset capable of generating employment, expanding internally generated revenue, reducing rural poverty and positioning the State as Nigeria’s foremost cassava processing and export hub.
Beyond Farming: The Economics of Value Addition
The greatest misconception that can surround cassava is that wealth is created primarily through cultivation. In reality, cultivation represents only the first stage of a much larger value chain.
Fresh cassava roots are highly perishable, often, it can begin deteriorating within 48 to 72 hours after harvest. This characteristic forces many farmers to dispose of their harvest quickly, often at depressed prices determined by middlemen rather than by market fundamentals. Consequently, farmers bear the greatest production risks while earning the smallest share of the final value.
Successful cassava-producing countries have overcome this challenge by ensuring that fresh roots move rapidly into processing industries where they are transformed into products with significantly longer shelf lives and substantially higher commercial value.
Today, cassava is processed into:
industrial starch;
food-grade starch;
modified starch for manufacturing;
glucose syrup;
sorbitol;
ethanol;
high-quality cassava flour;
cassava chips;
cassava pellets;
livestock feed ingredients;
adhesives;
pharmaceutical binders;
biodegradable industrial products; and numerous food products.
The economic implication is profound: every additional stage of processing creates new enterprises, new jobs, higher tax revenues and increased export earnings.
A Growing Global Market
Contrary to the common perception that cassava is consumed only within Africa, it has become an increasingly commercial crop in global agriculture. While relatively little fresh cassava is traded internationally because of its perishability, processed cassava products—including starch, dried chips, pellets and industrial derivatives—are actively traded across continents. Recent international outlooks show that processed cassava continues to gain importance in food, feed, starch and bio-based industries, with Thailand remaining the world’s leading exporter and Vietnam another major supplier, while China remains the largest importing market.
The international market increasingly demands products rather than raw roots. This distinction is critical.
It must be emphasized that the wealth generated by cassava industries in Asia does not arise because those countries necessarily produce more cassava than Nigeria. Rather, they have invested in processing capacity, quality standards, logistics and export systems that convert a bulky agricultural commodity into internationally tradable industrial products. This offers a powerful lesson for Kogi State. Instead of competing solely as another producer of raw cassava, the State should aspire to become West Africa’s principal processor and exporter of cassava-based products, this in turn, will end up empowering producers at the local level.
Thailand: A Lesson in Agricultural Transformation
Perhaps no country illustrates the commercial potential of cassava more convincingly than Thailand.
Several decades ago, cassava in Thailand occupied a position remarkably similar to that of cassava in many Nigerian states today. It was grown largely by smallholder farmers, often on marginal lands.
However, Government intervention changed that trajectory. Rather than attempting to cultivate cassava simply, public policy focused on improving planting materials, encouraging private processing industries, developing transport infrastructure, supporting research, promoting exports and creating stable commercial markets. The crop evolved from a subsistence staple into a fully commercial enterprise serving the animal-feed, food-processing and industrial sectors. Thailand subsequently became the world’s leading exporter of processed cassava products.
The central lesson is clear: governments do not have to solely own factories to transform agriculture. While, like in Kogi State, for obvious reasons, they can trailblaze, their primary responsibility is to establish institutions and policies that allow farmers and processors to thrive together.
Vietnam: An Example in Building an Export Industry Through Value Addition
Vietnam presents another compelling example.
Over the last three decades, Vietnam expanded improved cassava varieties, attracted investment into starch processing plants and encouraged export-oriented production. Foreign investment in starch manufacturing, coupled with coordinated research and development, enabled cassava to evolve into an important export commodity despite the country’s comparatively smaller production base.
Vietnam’s experience demonstrates that industrial policy, technological improvement and market integration can compensate for limitations in production volume.
For Kogi State, the implication is straightforward: economic success will depend less upon cultivating larger areas of cassava than upon increasing the proportion converted into higher-value industrial products. In other words, the current cultivation capacity can be viably leveraged to achieve resounding economic results.
Nigeria’s Untapped Advantage
Ironically, Nigeria is widely recognised as the world’s largest producer of cassava, yet its participation in international cassava trade remains remarkably limited. Much of the crop is consumed domestically or marketed with minimal processing, leaving substantial export and industrial opportunities unrealised.This paradox should concern policymakers. Being the world’s largest producer should ordinarily position Nigeria among the world’s leading exporters of cassava products. Instead, countries with lower production volumes have captured a far greater share of the international market by focusing on value addition rather than raw production. Kogi State can help reverse this national imbalance by positioning itself as the country’s leading centre for industrial cassava processing.
Why Kogi State Is Exceptionally Positioned
Few Nigerian states possess the combination of advantages available to Kogi. Its central geographical location provides relatively convenient access to northern, southern, eastern and western markets.
Its extensive agricultural land supports large-scale cultivation.
Its numerous communities already possess considerable experience in cassava production. The River Niger and River Benue corridors, together with the State’s road connections (some of which still needs revamping or opening up), provide strategic logistical opportunities for moving agricultural produce and processed goods. More importantly, Kogi State lies within a national production environment where raw cassava is abundant, meaning that future processing industries need not rely exclusively on production within the State. As industrial capacity expands, Kogi State could attract cassava from neighbouring states for processing, thereby becoming a regional manufacturing and export hub.
This distinction is crucial.
The long-term objective should not merely be to simply produce more cassava. It should be to process more cassava than any other state in Nigeria.That is where sustainable wealth resides.
A Defining Opportunity
Around the world, agricultural prosperity has rarely resulted from increased production alone. It has emerged where governments deliberately connected farmers to industries, industries to markets, and markets to international trade.
Cassava offers Kogi State precisely such an opportunity. Handled strategically, it can evolve from a subsistence crop into the foundation of a diversified industrial economy—one that empowers smallholder farmers, the working-poor or low income earners as well as those who earn reasonable income, attracts private investment, stimulates manufacturing, creates thousands of direct and indirect jobs, expands export earnings and strengthens the State’s internally generated revenue (IGR) without imposing additional burdens on its citizens.
The challenge before Kogi State is therefore not whether cassava possesses transformative potential. The real question is whether the State is prepared to organise that potential into an enduring engine of economic growth.
Henry Oseka Orire is a Lawyer,
Public Commentator and Political Analyst.
