September 27, (THEWILL) – Sam Diala outlines how Nigeria can boost production; make nutritious food affordable, accessible and available to ordinary households.
Food is supposed to do more than silence hunger. It must nourish the body, develop the brain, strengthen immunity and provide the energy required for people to learn, work and build productive lives. Yet in Nigeria today, millions of families face a painful choice between eating enough food and eating the right food.
This is the central paradox of Nigeria’s food crisis: a country can have food available in its markets and still have millions of people unable to afford a healthy diet. The challenge, therefore, is no longer simply how to produce more food. Nigeria must ask a more important question: How can it make nutritious food affordable, accessible and available to ordinary households?
That question has become urgent. Nigeria’s National Bureau of Statistics reported headline inflation at 15.43 percent in July 2026, while food inflation rose sharply to 20.31 percent. The divergence is significant: even as general inflation moderates, the cost of feeding Nigerian families remains under intense pressure.
The consequences go far beyond the dinner table. Expensive food reduces household purchasing power, forces families to compromise dietary quality, increases malnutrition and undermines children’s educational development. It also weakens productivity and ultimately constrains economic growth.
The World Food Programme estimates that nearly 35 million Nigerians are projected to face acute and severe food insecurity during the 2026 lean season. It also reports that 4.8 million children and women require nutrition assistance annually in northeastern Nigeria.
This is therefore not merely a nutrition problem. It is an economic-development problem.
When Food Is Available but Nutrition Is Unaffordable
For many Nigerian households, the first response to rising food prices is predictable: buy less expensive food. But cheap calories are not necessarily cheap nutrition. Rice, cassava, yam, maize and other staples are important components of the Nigerian diet. However, a healthy diet also requires vegetables, fruits, legumes, eggs, fish, meat or other sources of quality protein, alongside appropriate fats and other micronutrients.
The Food and Agriculture Organization’s analysis of food prices shows why this is difficult. Basic starchy staples remain among the cheapest sources of calories, while vegetables, fruits and animal-source foods are generally more expensive. In Nigeria, food prices rose faster than overall inflation between 2019 and 2024, while basic staples recorded particularly strong increases.
This creates what may be called Nigeria’s nutrition affordability trap. A poor household does not necessarily stop eating. It changes what it eats. A family that once bought eggs several times a week may reduce consumption. Fish becomes an occasional purchase. Fruits become a luxury. Vegetables are bought in smaller quantities. Protein portions shrink while cheaper carbohydrates occupy more space on the plate.
The stomach may be full, but the body is not necessarily adequately nourished. This distinction is crucial. The objective of food policy should not be simply to make calories cheaper. It should be to make nutritious calories affordable.
FAO defines the cost of a healthy diet as the cost of purchasing the least expensive locally available foods needed to meet energy requirements and food-based dietary guidelines. Affordability then considers whether people can actually purchase that diet after meeting other essential needs.
This is precisely where Nigeria’s policy debate must move.
The Hidden Economic Cost of Malnutrition
Nutrition is often treated as a health-sector issue. That is a mistake. A malnourished child today can become a less productive worker tomorrow.
UNICEF Nigeria reports that only 17 percent of Nigerian babies are exclusively breastfed during their first six months, while only 18 percent of children aged 6–23 months receive the minimum acceptable diet. UNICEF also notes that stunting is associated with impaired cognitive development, poorer educational performance and lower productivity in adulthood, with the economic losses from malnutrition estimated at as much as 11 percent of GDP.
The economic argument for nutrition investment is therefore compelling. Every child who suffers preventable malnutrition represents more than an individual tragedy. It potentially means lost learning, reduced future earnings and a smaller pool of productive human capital. Nigeria cannot simultaneously complain about low productivity, youth unemployment, weak human capital and poor educational outcomes while treating nutrition as an afterthought.
A well-fed child is more likely to learn. A well-nourished adolescent is better positioned to develop physically and intellectually. A healthy adult is more capable of working productively. Nutrition is therefore not consumption alone. It is an investment in human capital. There are various ways of solving this anomaly.
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The Way Out: Seven-Point Agenda
The First Solution: Produce What Nigerians Need to Eat Nigeria’s agricultural strategy must move beyond measuring success by tonnes of food produced. The more important question should be: Are we producing enough of the foods Nigerians need for healthy diets?
Nigeria has enormous agricultural potential, but production patterns, market incentives and infrastructure do not always align with nutrition priorities. A farmer responds to prices and market opportunities. If producing a particular crop is more profitable, farmers will naturally concentrate on it.
Government therefore has a role in shaping incentives. Rather than concentrating agricultural support overwhelmingly around staple crops, Nigeria should deliberately strengthen the production of nutrient-dense foods such as legumes, vegetables, fruits, eggs, fish and other affordable protein sources.
This does not mean abandoning rice, maize, cassava or yam. It means creating a more balanced food system. Nigeria’s own food-based dietary guidelines recommend dietary diversity, including cereals, legumes, roots and tubers, fruits, vegetables, fish, lean meat and local cheese, while encouraging moderation in salt, sugar and unhealthy fats. The policy objective should therefore be diversity by design.
Agricultural credit, extension services, irrigation, improved seeds, storage infrastructure and market access should be targeted not only at increasing food volume but also at increasing the availability of nutritious foods.
The Second Solution: Make Nutrition a Market Problem. Government cannot solve Nigeria’s food crisis alone. The private sector must become a major part of the solution. Nigeria needs a stronger ecosystem of businesses producing nutritious foods at affordable prices. Food manufacturers, farmers, logistics companies, retailers, financial institutions and technology firms can all contribute. The opportunity is enormous.
Instead of viewing nutrition only through the lens of expensive imported products, Nigerian businesses should develop affordable local alternatives. Food manufacturers can reformulate products to reduce excessive salt, sugar and unhealthy fats while increasing nutritional value. Agribusinesses can invest in processing vegetables, fruits, legumes and other perishables into affordable products with longer shelf lives. Dairy, poultry, aquaculture and egg producers can expand access to affordable animal-source protein.
Small and medium-sized enterprises can develop locally appropriate nutritious foods designed around Nigerian tastes and purchasing patterns. The key is not simply producing “healthy” food for wealthy consumers. The real test is whether a low-income Nigerian family can afford it. That means innovation must focus on cost, convenience, nutrition and cultural acceptance simultaneously.
The Third Solution: Fix the Cost of Moving Food
Nigeria does not have only a food-production problem. It has a food-distribution problem. A farmer can produce tomatoes, peppers, vegetables or fruits, yet consumers may still pay extremely high prices because of transportation costs, poor roads, insecurity, storage deficiencies and multiple layers of middlemen. Food can become expensive without becoming scarce. This is why investment in rural roads, rail links, cold storage, warehouses and efficient logistics should be considered nutrition policy.
Reducing post-harvest losses would also increase effective food supply without requiring farmers to cultivate every additional hectare. Nigeria needs modern food corridors linking producing communities to major urban markets.
The objective should be simple:
The shorter the distance between the farmer and the consumer, the smaller the avoidable cost between production and consumption. Digital platforms can also improve market efficiency by connecting farmers directly with aggregators, processors, retailers and institutional buyers.
The government does not necessarily need to become the food trader. It needs to create the infrastructure and rules that allow food markets to work efficiently.
The Fourth Solution: Make Schools Nutrition Centres
If Nigeria wants a long-term solution to malnutrition, it must start with children. School feeding should therefore be treated as both a nutrition intervention and an agricultural-development programme.
A well-designed school feeding programme can create guaranteed demand for locally produced food while improving children’s nutrition and school attendance. Instead of simply distributing food purchased from distant suppliers, governments can develop systems that connect schools with local farmers, women-led cooperatives, poultry producers, fish farmers and food processors.
A school meal could become a market for the local agricultural economy. Imagine a system in which schools purchase eggs from nearby poultry farmers, vegetables from local growers, beans from farmer cooperatives and other nutritious foods from local processors.
The benefits would multiply.
Children receive better nutrition.
Farmers gain predictable markets.
Small businesses gain customers.
Local economies gain income.
Government spending generates broader economic activity.
This is how nutrition policy can become development policy.
The Fifth Solution: Protect the First 1,000 Days
Nigeria must pay special attention to the period from pregnancy through a child’s first two years of life—the foundation period for physical and cognitive development.
Nutrition interventions during this period can have consequences that extend throughout a person’s lifetime. Nigeria should therefore strengthen maternal nutrition, breastfeeding support, antenatal nutrition education, infant feeding practices and early detection and treatment of acute malnutrition.
UNICEF’s data on breastfeeding and complementary feeding demonstrate the size of the challenge. But information alone is not enough. It is difficult to tell a poor mother to provide a diverse diet when the household cannot afford eggs, fish, fruits or vegetables. That is why nutrition education must be combined with economic solutions.
A mother cannot consume what is unavailable.
A family cannot buy what it cannot afford.
The answer must therefore combine knowledge, supply and purchasing power.
The Sixth Solution: Use Social Protection More Intelligently
Social protection should not merely help families survive a crisis. It should protect nutrition. Cash transfers, food vouchers and other social assistance programmes can be designed to improve access to nutritious food. But targeting matters.
Where possible, programmes should prioritise vulnerable households with pregnant women, infants, young children and people affected by conflict or displacement. The objective should not be to subsidise every food item indiscriminately.
Blanket subsidies can be extremely expensive and may benefit richer consumers who consume more of the subsidised commodity. Nigeria should instead consider targeted nutrition support that puts purchasing power directly in the hands of vulnerable households.
Digital identification and payment systems can improve targeting and reduce leakage, provided safeguards are established for people who lack digital access.
The Seventh Solution: Reduce the “Nutrition Tax” on Healthy Food
One of Nigeria’s biggest policy mistakes would be to assume that all food inflation affects nutrition equally. It does not. When prices of vegetables, eggs, fish, fruits and legumes rise faster than household incomes, the nutritional quality of diets suffers.
Government should therefore monitor not just the general food inflation rate but the cost of a healthy Nigerian diet. This should become a regular policy indicator.
The Federal Government and states should know:
What does it cost to feed a Nigerian family a healthy diet?
Which foods have become prohibitively expensive?
Which nutrient-dense foods have the greatest supply constraints?
Which regions face the largest affordability gaps?
Which interventions can reduce prices without destroying farmers’ incentives?
FAO has specifically highlighted Nigeria as an example of how cost-and-affordability data can be incorporated into investment planning, including through its Policy Optimization Tool. Nigeria should use this opportunity to move from broad food policies to nutrition-sensitive budgeting.
The Northern Crisis Requires a Different Strategy
Nigeria cannot discuss affordable nutrition without addressing insecurity. The country’s food crisis is particularly severe in parts of the North, where insurgency, banditry, displacement and climate pressures disrupt both food production and access.
The WFP estimates that nearly 35 million Nigerians face acute food insecurity during the 2026 lean season, with northeast Nigeria experiencing particularly severe conditions.
The situation has become so serious that northeast Nigeria was identified among the world’s hunger hotspots of highest concern in 2026, with populations in Borno projected to face catastrophic levels of acute food insecurity.
There can be no sustainable nutrition strategy in communities where farmers cannot safely cultivate their farms.
Food security, therefore, is also security policy.
Protecting farming communities, reopening agricultural markets, supporting displaced farmers and restoring rural livelihoods must become part of Nigeria’s national nutrition strategy.
Humanitarian assistance is necessary during emergencies, but it cannot substitute indefinitely for functioning local food systems. The ultimate goal must be to move communities from food dependence to food resilience.
Climate Change Must Be Included
Nigeria’s food policy must also anticipate a changing climate. Floods, droughts, irregular rainfall and extreme temperatures threaten agricultural production and food prices. The solution is not simply to produce more food under today’s conditions.
Farmers need access to climate-resilient seeds, irrigation, water management, extension services, weather information and improved farming practices.
Storage is equally important. If Nigeria can store food during periods of abundance and release it during periods of scarcity, seasonal price volatility can be reduced. This is where strategic grain reserves, commodity exchanges, warehouses and private-sector storage infrastructure can complement agricultural production.
Imperative for New Social Contract
The country needs a new social contract around food. That contract must recognise that affordable nutrition is both a human necessity and an economic investment.
Nigeria has the land, farmers, entrepreneurs, food companies, young population and enormous domestic market required to build a stronger food system. What is missing is a sufficiently coordinated strategy that connects agriculture with nutrition, markets with affordability, social protection with human capital and food security with national security.
The goal should not merely be a Nigeria where people have enough food to survive.
It should be a Nigeria where children can grow without preventable malnutrition; where parents can afford a diverse diet; where farmers can earn decent incomes; where nutritious food is produced locally; where food does not become unnecessarily expensive between the farm and the table; and where government spending creates lasting food-system resilience rather than temporary relief.
The real measure of agricultural success should therefore not be simply how much Nigeria produces. It should be how many Nigerians can afford to eat well. That is the standard that should guide Nigeria’s food policy in the years ahead.
Definitely, hunger is not solved when the stomach is merely full. Hunger is solved when every Nigerian has affordable access to the nutrition needed to live, learn, work and thrive.
Nestle Nigeria’s Example
Over the past year, Nestlé Nigeria Plc has undertaken several important initiatives in the areas of nutrition and affordable food solutions. These efforts span product innovation, nutrition education, vendor support, local sourcing, and value-chain enhancements. Below is a detailed overview of what the company has done, how it addresses affordability and nutrition.
Nestlé Nigeria has launched and promoted products aimed at combining nutrient-rich content with accessible pricing. For example, in April 2025, the company launched Golden Morn 3in1, billed as Nigeria’s first ready-to-eat maize-and-soya cereal, which only requires adding water, offering a complete meal format.
At the launch, Managing Director Wassim Elhusseini said this innovation represents a “significant advancement in convenience and affordability, making it easier than ever for families to enjoy a nutritious meal”.
Furthermore, Nestlé reported that in 2025, “95% of its food and beverage products sold in Nigeria are now fortified to meet at least 15% of the recommended daily allowance (RDA) of key nutrients”. This is part of its “Nutrition for All Life Stages” focus.
In yet another strand, the company also introduced Maggi Soya Chunks, a soya-based texturized protein product, targeted at food vendors and everyday households as a lower-cost alternative protein source, helping maintain nutrition amid cost pressures.
These product steps show Nestlé Nigeria deliberately trying to embed nutrition into foods that are already consumed by many households, while keeping convenience and cost in mind.
Sam Diala is a Bloomberg Certified Financial Journalist with over a decade of experience in reporting Business and Economy. He is Business Editor at THEWILL Newspaper, and believes that work, not wishes, creates wealth.
