The Government of Nigeria (GON) is in a hurry to build a private sector led agribusiness ecosystem that addresses two fundamental gaps in the economy: reduce the heavy import dependence for basis food items; and increase foreign exchange generation from exporting many cash crops that Nigeria produces. The GON looks up to the private sector to play a leadership role in achieving these two objectives. As clearly elucidated in the Agriculture Promotion Policy framework, Government recognizes that the “success of the new agricultural policy will be driven by the levels of engagement of market place participants, farmers, states, investors, financial institutions, and communities. Performance will be tracked and published periodically to help inform smart decision making” (Chief Ogbeh, Agriculture Promotion Policy document, P.3).

One approach to track the performance of the agribusiness sector sustainably is a public-private partnership model call “The Nigeria Agribusiness Register”, modelled after the concept of Business Registers. It produces a quarterly statistics on agribusiness population, openings, closures, intentions and demography. It is a veritable and a first of its kind platform for aggregating investments in the agribusiness supply chain across the country that can be used to measure growth, jobs and inclusiveness. The Register will capture investor preferences, identified opportunities within geographies, as well as value chain and supply chain focus. Focus will be on the priority value chains of the Government of Nigeria which currently includes rice, wheat, maize, aquaculture, dairy milk, soya beans, poultry, horticulture, sugarcane. Others include cowpea, cocoa, cashew, cassava, ginger, sesame, oil palm, gum arabic, yam, horticulture, beef, and cotton.