The Federal Government has moved to address one of the most persistent obstacles undermining its flagship agricultural transformation programme by unveiling a one-stop-shop (OSS) framework designed to cut through the regulatory fragmentation.
 
The programme also seeks to address approval delays that have kept investors at arm’s length from the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZs).

Speaking at a strategic roundtable on the OSS framework in Abuja, Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, described the initiative as something more fundamental than an administrative fix.
 
The SAPZ programme, she said, currently carries financing commitments of about $536 million from the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the Islamic Development Bank while it is being implemented across Kaduna, Kano, Kwara, Ogun, Oyo, Cross River and Imo states as well as the Federal Capital Territory, covering 37 local government areas and 116 communities.
 
“Phase two, with an additional $200 million approved, is already underway, with 10 more states, Gombe, Niger, Katsina, Kebbi, Plateau, Ekiti, Anambra, Delta, Enugu and Borno states being considered for inclusion.
 
“The OSS must be designed as a delivery mechanism at scale, leveraging technology and artificial intelligence effectively, not just another office,” Oduwole said.
  
The minister stressed that success would be measured not in funding pledges, but in operational enterprises, private capital attracted, jobs created and farmers integrated into commercial value chains.

The SAPZ programme, approved by the AfDB in December 2021 and backed by a $210 million loan, did not become effective until October 2023, nearly two years lost before a single activity commenced.
 
The AfDB subsequently rated the programme’s overall performance as “problematic”, assigning it an unsatisfactory score in its Implementation Progress and Results Report, citing slow implementation and disbursement challenges.

As of March 31, the commitment rate stood at 41 per cent while disbursement had reached only 12 per cent, equivalent to $25 million out of the total envelope.
  
The bank also flagged capacity deficiencies within state-level project implementation units and the national coordination office, noting that these teams had been unable to meet the financial management, procurement and safeguards demands of the programme.
  
Also speaking at the roundtable, Minister for Agriculture, Abubakar Kyari, lamented the structural reality investors face.
 
According to him, investors no longer pursue markets alone, but add ecosystems to their pursuit.
 
He added that institutional efficiency, rather than infrastructure alone, would ultimately determine the programme’s fate.
 
Agro-industrial investments in Nigeria typically require navigation across multiple federal agencies, state governments, public-private partnership frameworks, land administration systems and tax regimes that vary from state to state.

The proposed OSS framework is intended to fold approvals, regulatory support, investment facilitation and enterprise services into a single, predictable platform, complementing existing structures rather than duplicating them.
 
National Programme Coordinator, Dr Kabir Yusuf, who convened the roundtable to build stakeholder alignment around the investment ecosystem, pointed to the broader economic rationale.
  
Nigeria, Ghana, Cameroon and Côte d’Ivoire together supply over 70 per cent of the world’s cocoa for a $148 billion global industry, yet farmers capture less than two per cent of that value because the commodity leaves as a raw bean rather than chocolate.

The SAPZ zones, he argued, exist precisely to close that gap, linking production to processing, infrastructure to enterprise and local output to regional and global markets under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which opens access to a consumer base of roughly 1.3 billion people.
 
The government also intended to integrate ongoing trade facilitation reforms, including the national single window project, into the SAPZ ecosystem to reduce delays in documentation, customs clearance and inter-agency coordination.
 
Kyari added that Nigeria was positioning itself as a preferred agro-industrial investment destination under AfCFTA.
 
According to him, the establishment of agro-industrial hubs and agricultural transformation centres under the programme was intended to create investment destinations where production was linked to processing, infrastructure supports enterprise development and local opportunities connect with regional and global markets.