DANGOTE & CBN TEAM UP TO ESTABLISH $25M TOMATO PASTE FACTORY

With lots of tomato sellers looking for new customers to buy their produce, this may come as good news to sore ears. Research shows that two-thirds of these farmer’s produce rot away due to lack of patronage. Will it then be correct to say many women are now taking to canned tomato paste?

Seeing this problem, Nigeria’s Central bank and Africa’s richest man, Aliko Dangote, have teamed up to establish a $25 million tomato-paste factory that could boost income for over 8,000 farmers across the country.

Farmers we spoke to agreed saying with the timely intervention of Dangote and the CBN they hope things will change. They agreed there are better prospects in supplying Dangote because people will buy from them from all over the country.

In its drive to cut annual food imports which stands at above $10billion, the intervention by the Central Bank of Nigeria has gotten high applause as processing local tomatoes is cheaper than importing paste from China. This singular move also has the potential of boosting agriculture in the country and creating jobs in the north where poverty and unemployment have fuelled an Islamist insurgency.

The Central Bank of Nigeria Governor Lamido Sanusi has since been responding to questions asked by the public regarding this project.