Nigeria grows a great deal of food it never eats, and it is now turning to Asia for help in stopping the waste. The country is seeking technology and expertise from India and China to tackle post-harvest losses that cost its agricultural sector an estimated $2.5 billion a year, with cold storage and food processing among the main areas under discussion, according to Ecofin Agency.
The Size of the Leak
The losses are enormous by any measure. Nigeria loses an estimated 30 to 40 million metric tonnes of food a year to post-harvest inefficiencies, with tomatoes, vegetables, fruits, dairy, meat, fish and root crops the worst affected, according to the Organization for Technology Advancement of Cold Chain in West Africa as reported by The Sun, which valued the 2025 losses at between ₦3.5 trillion and ₦5 trillion. The scale is such that a hungry nation effectively throws away tens of millions of tonnes of food each year, according to The Guardian. The head of the cold-chain body, Alexander Isong, warned that without certified cold-chain systems the country would keep struggling with food inflation, reduced farmer income and limited export competitiveness, according to The Sun.
A Ten-Year, Multi-Billion-Dollar Plan
Nigeria has a strategy on paper. In late 2025 the government unveiled the Nigeria Postharvest Systems Transformation Programme, a ten-year plan expected to mobilise about $3.5 billion to modernise storage from household level to community warehouses and national strategic reserves under public-private partnerships, with a push on underused solar-powered cold rooms, according to Milling Middle East & Africa. The Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Abubakar Kyari, said the programme was designed to stabilise food prices, improve storage capacity, promote food import substitution and lift farmer incomes, according to Economic Confidential. It sits alongside a wider National Agri-Food Systems Investment Plan that aims to mobilise $100 billion in public and private agrifood investment, according to The Rio Times.
Why Asia
The logic behind courting China and India is that both built the storage, cold-chain, processing and logistics systems Nigeria now lacks, and did so while turning agriculture into a value-added industry, according to The Rio Times. Nigeria has already received a proposed protocol agreement from India that could open the door to agricultural cooperation, according to Ecofin Agency. The commercial case is sharpened by trade, since agricultural exports fell about 31 per cent in the first quarter of 2026 on the back of port delays and quality failures, according to The Rio Times. Better storage and processing would mean fewer spoiled tomatoes, fewer rejected export containers and steadier prices between harvests.
FoodPrices Nigeria tracks verified retail prices across Lagos markets, where the food lost between farm and table eventually surfaces as the price shoppers pay at the stall.