A coalition of foreign and Nigeria based agro companies led by Shine Bridge Incorporated has indicated interest to partner with the Federal Government on large scale commercial cassava processing and food manufacturing.
Shine Bridge is a U.S.-based agricultural policy think-tank and food technology transfer company.
Dr Tony Bello, Chairman, Shine Bridge, said at a roundtable with the Minister of State for Agriculture and Food Security, Sen. Aliyu Abdullahi, on Wednesday in Abuja.
Bello, who is also the Founder of Shine Bridge, said that cassava had the potential to provide food, forex, and transform economy of the country.
He said there was a large international market for cassava products as the U.S. alone imported about 80,000 tonnes of processed cassava products.
According to him, most of the cassava import into the U.S. comes from Thailand, Costa Rica, Vietnam and China.
He said that Nigeria was the largest producer of cassava and there was no reason why Nigeria should not control the lion share of that market.
Bello said that the target of the coalition was to boost processing capacity of partner companies in Nigeria, and to export 50,000 tonnes of high-quality cassava flour and food grade cassava starch at 500 dollars per tonne.(NAN)
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