Nigeria is expected to produce around 40 million birds by 2025. Through its Poultry Development Program, the company hopes to create over 100,000 jobs. Commits to investing NGN 20 billion in chicken production over the next four years.’
Agricorp International, Nigeria’s fast-growing agribusiness producing, processing, and export enterprise, has spent N4 billion on chicken production facilities in three Nigerian states. This move would broaden the company’s portfolio to encompass animal production, processing, and eventual export, while also creating jobs and helping to reduce Nigeria’s chicken meat deficit.
Since its inception in 2018, Agricorp has specialized in the production and processing of spices, empowering over 5000 smallholder farmers and assisting them in increasing their revenue by roughly 20% while improving their market access to sell their farm goods. It is now poised to give more Nigerian youths the opportunity to enter the agricultural value chain by equipping them with the necessary skills and capacity through its poultry development initiative, ‘Project Eclipse 2025.’
Agricorp plans to invest approximately N20 billion in the production, processing, and eventual export of chicken products through Project Eclipse 2025. By 2025, this investment is expected to generate direct and indirect employment for 100,000 Nigerian youngsters.
It would also help the country achieve long-term economic growth, decrease the burden of importing chicken products, and give constructive jobs and decent labor for young people, half of whom will be women.
Agricorp achieved mortality rates of between 5-7 percent throughout its multiple farm locations during the pilot phase of its chicken program in Q3 2021, with a 100 percent off-take rate from its partners, who are important stakeholders in the poultry processing value chain.
“The rising inflation rate in agriculture and food produce is a concern that stares us in the face,” says Kenneth Obiajulu, Co-Founder and CEO of Agricorp.
“Our reliance on imported food products adds to the drain on foreign exchange. Investing N4 billion on 142 poultry cages in Kogi, Kwara, and Nasarawa states will increase annual chicken production by at least 3 million birds. At the outset, the project would create at least 1,500 employment and assist slightly to easing the demand on foreign exchange created by poultry imports into the country.”
“This is a big project for the firm,” says Wale Omotimirin, Co-Founder of Agricorp. We have set an ambitious aim of producing 40 million poultry birds by 2025, which will account for around 4% of the expected yearly demand. By making our first pledge and investment, we have proved our good faith. By the second quarter of 2022, we will have begun the second phase of deploying more resources to double our existing capacity. We are accepting the mandate to assist strengthen the economy in the most effective way we know how — through agriculture.”
According to a Central Bank of Nigeria research from 2019, it is projected that over 1.2 million MT of poultry meat is trafficked into Nigeria from Benin Republic. This creates a significant void in the chicken market, which Agricorp is eager to fill. Approximately the next four years, Agricorp will construct over 1,000 chicken pens, each with a capacity of 10,000 birds. This would increase Agricorp’s ability to produce the planned 40 million poultry birds by 2025, as well as build Nigerian capacity by offering entrepreneurial possibilities, all of which are crucial to meeting these targets.
