Urbanization and Culture Lag in Nigeria’s Food System: A Call for More Rural-Intensive Agricultural Programmes

Urbanization is the movement of people and the transition of major economic activities from rural areas to urban centers. By 2050, the global urban population is projected to increase to 68% from 55% estimated in 2018 and a significant contribution (90percent) of this increment will be from Asia and Africa.

Urbanization in Africa has been very rapid. Over 75 cities have developed within the continent and almost half of sub-Saharan Africa’s population now live in the urban areas. By 2050, the number is expected to reach 60 percent. Also, in the coming years Africa will be home to almost 1billion new urban dwellers which is about what Europe, the US and Japan combined have managed over the last 265 years.

Nigeria is tipped to lead Africa’s urban growth with the country expected to produce an estimated 189million new urban dwellers by 2050. Lagos will significantly drive the numbers, expanding by 77 people per hour between 2020 and 2050.

Among the factors impacting agriculture and food production in Nigeria, urbanization stands strong with its footprints felt in the economic, social, political, cultural and psychological lives of the people. One of the impacts of urbanization is the dwindling agrarian culture of the country. The massive exodus of people from rural to urban areas in search of better living conditions has caused many young individuals to develop apathy towards farming, a profession which hitherto has been the ancestral pride of most ethnic groups in the country.

Over the years, the failure of the Government to reach a lasting solution to the rural-urban development gap has led to more food crises in the country. More than 40 million smallholder farmers in the rural communities are increasingly marginalized and incapacitated to produce optimally due to rural-urban drift. According to a Statista report, in 2022, the extreme poverty rate in Africa stood at around 50 percent among the rural population compared to 10 percent in urban areas.

Despite its huge agricultural potential, Nigeria has one of the highest poverty index (more than 40 percent) and undernourished people in the world. In 2021, nearly 13 percent of the world’s population in extreme poverty, with the poverty threshold at 1.90 US Dollars a day lived in Nigeria and more than 80 percent of rural dwellers live within the poverty line.

According to the World Bank’s forecast in January 2021, an additional 10.9 million Nigerians is estimated to enter into the poverty line by 2022 due to the effect of the covid-19 pandemic. The vast opportunities in the agricultural landscape have remained largely untapped due to the underdevelopment of the rural regions where most farmers and farm settlements are concentrated.

One of the attendant effects of the scarcity of agricultural and social infrastructure in rural communities has been an increase in skill and technical deficiency among the local farmers which also culminates in culture lag in the agriculture and food sector. Culture lag is a situation where local farmers are unable to keep up with global agricultural practices at a pace needed to compete globally and address the local food needs. Thus, it should not come as a surprise that Nigeria loses about 7 billion US Dollars worth of agricultural produce yearly and spends 10 billion US Dollars annually on import to meet the local food shortfalls.

In order to position Nigeria to achieve sustainable development and drive continuous innovation for its food system, farmers and young agricultural entrepreneurs in the rural regions of the country need to be strengthened, integrated and transformed into highly skilled and competent individuals capable of producing optimally and competing favourably in the global agricultural ecosystem. This calls for more rural-intensive and inclusive agricultural programmes in the country.