Market News

Nigeria has been ranked seventh in the latest World Bank's evaluation of countries' performance in agriculture and farming across Africa, behind South Africa, Kenya and Ghana, among others.
This was revealed in World Bank's 'The Enabling the Business of Agriculture (EBA)' report December 2019.
The report captures steps taken by different governments to help farmers and enhance agriculture and food security. It measures law and regulations that impact the business environment for a sustaining and thriving agricultural development.
The measurement is global with France leading. In Africa, South Africa leads, followed by Kenya and Morocco in the second and third position respectively. Other African countries with higher ranking than Nigeria are Zambia, Mozambique and Ghana.
Nigeria recorded an aggregate score of 49.17, lower than the scores of South Africa and Kenya with respective scores of 68.73 and 64.80. The World Bank used eight indicators to measure the regulation and bureaucratic processes of about 101 countries. The indicators mentioned include supplying of seeds, registering fertilizer, water security, registering machinery, livestock sustenance, protecting plant health, food trading and accessing finance.
Although EBA failed to show data on the indicator's final individual performances of every country, so it is difficult to confirm which particular indicator draws Nigeria backward.
However between 2016 and 2018, the report shows that Nigeria made big reforms in two out the eight indicators; trading food and sustaining livestock.
"Nigeria made its livestock manufacturing processes safer by requiring facilities to be approved prior to the start of operations, and by requiring that monitoring records be kept, also, Nigeria made it easier to trade agricultural products by publishing the official fee schedule of phytosanitary certificates both online and in the legislation," the report said.
Source: Allafrica.com