Enhancing Nigeria’s Food Security Efforts Through NASENI’s Agricultural Mechanisation

Nigeria faces a food security paradox. With over 84 million hectares of arable land and a youth population of more than 60%, the country should feed itself and export to others. However, Nigeria spent N3.53 trillion on raw materials imports in the first half of 2025 alone, while post-harvest losses consumed up to 40% of staple crops annually. The naira weakens under the weight of imported food and machinery. Rural unemployment persists, and climate shocks expose the fragility of rain-fed, hoe-and-cutlass agriculture.

These are the gaps which the National Agency for Science and Engineering Infrastructure (NASENI) is currently bridging through its indigenous technology and local contents. Tasked with promoting science, engineering, and technological infrastructure, NASENI has moved from research on shelves to factory floors with a clear mandate: mechanised agriculture, localised production, and to cut the chain of import dependence that threatens Nigeria’s food security.

Under the leadership of Executive Vice Chairman/CEO NASENI, Khalil Suleiman Halilu, the Agency is aggressively leveraging technology to industrialise Nigeria’s agricultural landscape. By treating engineering as the backbone of food security, NASENI is transforming the country’s agricultural architecture from subsistence farming into a highly mechanised, year-round commercial ecosystem.  This initiative on mechanised agriculture is yielding results for Nigerian farmers.

Restoring the Fleet: The Tractor Recovery Initiative

At the heart of any successful agricultural mechanization drive sits the tractor—a tool historically scarce and prohibitively expensive for the average Nigerian smallholder. Recognizing that importing new fleets strains foreign exchange reserves, NASENI adopted a smarter, highly pragmatic approach-The National Tractor Recovery Programme. Partnering with the Mechanisation Equipment Company of Africa (MECA), NASENI set an ambitious target to refurbish and breathe new life into thousands of abandoned, disused tractors littered across the country.

In states like Borno and Niger, this asset restoration model has already restored over 1,000 abandoned tractors. By fixing hydraulic systems, rebuilding engines, and repurposing local scrap metal, NASENI is providing smallholders and cooperatives with affordable access to heavy machinery. This direct deployment of engineering logistics effectively slashes land preparation times, boosts rural incomes, and rapidly expands total cultivated land mass.

The NASENI Tractor Recovery Programme, launched by the Agency in Borno and Niger state is a government initiative focused on recovering, repairing, and redeploying abandoned, obsolete, or broken-down agricultural machinery.  Instead of buying all new tractors at high import cost, disused and abandoned tractors were overhauled – engines rebuilt, parts replaced, hydraulics fixed to working condition. In Borno and Niger States, many farmers now have access to mechanized farming, thus having higher yields, shorter planting windows, and reduced farmer dependence on manual labour.

Domesticating Supply Chains

True self-reliance requires local manufacturing. Rather than remaining a perpetual consumer of foreign technology, NASENI is utilizing its specialized hubs—such as the Agricultural Machinery and Equipment Development Institute (AMEDI) in Lafia, Nasarawa State—to build domestic production value chains.

By utilizing AMEDI’s existing world-class facilities, NASENI is circumventing the bureaucratic delays and is creating thousands of industrial jobs for Nigerian youths while simultaneously generating a steady supply of customized, locally assembled tractors and implements tailored specifically for Nigeria’s unique soil topography. At AMEDI Lafia, research is moving rapidly toward precision agriculture, greenhouse automation, and hydroponics (soilless cultivation). These high-yields, space-optimized methodologies maximize resource efficiency, ensuring high crop output with minimal water and fertilizer footprints.

Solar-powered Irrigation Revolution

Beyond tilling the soil, mechanisation means insulating agriculture from the volatile shocks of climate change. For generations, Nigerian farming has been strictly rain-dependent. Despite possessing over 3 million hectares of irrigation potential, less than 10 per cent has historically been utilized. To confront this vulnerability, NASENI launched the Irrigate Nigeria Project in collaboration with the Renewed Hope Infrastructure Development Fund (RHIDF).

The cornerstone of this project is the national rollout of NASENI’s proprietary, solar-powered irrigation pumps. Strongly endorsed by the National Economic Council (NEC), the smart solar irrigation pumps are engineered to replace expensive, emission-heavy gasoline generators. By eliminating fuel overheads, the solar irrigation pumps significantly lower operational costs for farmers. This allows for seamless, smart, dry-season farming, effectively doubling annual harvests and capping volatile seasonal food prices.

Smart Tech and Organic fertilizers

Through international bilateral agreements—such as partnerships with Brazil’s CAMPO and also Indonesia’s PT Saputra Global Harvest, NASENI is actively working to commercialize coal-based organic fertilizers and advanced agro-processing machinery. This ensures that post-harvest losses, which historically claim up to 40 per cent of Nigeria’s perishable produce, are significantly mitigated through localized processing solutions.

NASENI and Whitefog are also in partnership for production of liquid fertilizer in Nigeria which aims to transform Nigeria’s agricultural landscape in line with President Bola Tinubu’s 8-point Agenda on food security, aligning with Sustainable Development Goals 2 (Zero Hunger), 1 (No Poverty), 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and 12 (Responsible Consumption and Production).

The coal fertilizer, an innovative and eco-friendly alternative to traditional fertilizers, with its 26 additional mineral concentrates and activation technology, is poised to address the challenges of low quality soil which is a major problem to Nigerian farmers. The project will have a profound impact on Nigeria’s agricultural sector, ensuring improved soil quality and fertility, increased crop yields and better harvests for farmers.”

As NASENI continues to drive innovation and technological advancement in Nigeria, the coal and liquid fertilizer projects stand as shining examples of the Agency’s commitment to transforming the country’s agricultural landscape. With its potential to revolutionize farming practices and improve food security, the two projects will create 2,000 direct jobs and over 20 million indirect jobs across the agricultural value chain stimulating economic growth and transforming the lives of millions of Nigerians.

NASENI’s Agricultural Incubation Centre

The Agency has commenced the construction of NASENI Agricultural Incubation Centres at the University of Abuja in Gwagwalada and Bayero University of Kano (BUK) respectively. The project which represents a strategic attempt to re-engineer Nigeria’s agricultural sector through science, technology and innovation (STI), would be replicated in one federal university in each geo-political zone.

While global agriculture has embraced precision farming, biotechnologies, climate-smart agriculture and data-driven production systems, Nigeria still relies largely on traditional methods. Research outputs from universities and institutes rarely translate into practical solutions on farms, creating a wide gap between knowledge generation and real-world application.

It is within this context that NASENI’s Agricultural Incubation Centre initiative becomes significant. Situated on a 10-hectare parcel of land within the University of Abuja, Gwagwalada, the Centre is designed as a technology-driven, commercially viable agricultural hub. The NASENI Agricultural Incubation Centre integrates poultry production, aquaculture, crop cultivation, greenhouse farming and cutting-edge research facilities, including a tissue culture laboratory.

Mechanization Pipeline: From R&D to Rural Fields

NASENI’s strategy hinges on one principle: Nigeria cannot achieve food security by importing the machines needed to grow, process, and store food. Under its current leadership, the Agency has expanded efforts to commercialize research outputs and collaborate with industries to scale production of locally developed technologies.

NASENI’s 2030 targets directly address this gap. The Agency projects a 25% reduction in the import bill to $34.7 billion by 2030 by locally manufacturing the top 10 imported items. It also projects over three million jobs through focused technology transfer to more than 300,000 small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and aims to lift 2.5 million people out of poverty in five years.

The Path Ahead: Scaling Beyond Pilots

Food security is a critical pillar of national security. As NASENI scales its manufacturing footprints and deep-tech initiatives across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, the Agency is proving that the path to feeding the nation does not lie in food imports or agricultural subsidies, but in technological self-reliance. By coupling public-private partnerships with homegrown engineering ingenuity, NASENI is successfully building an industrialised agricultural foundation capable of feeding Nigeria today and anchoring its economic stability tomorrow.

Experts argue that Nigeria’s industrial growth can only become sustainable through deliberate support for local manufacturing and homegrown technologies. For NASENI, the next step is scale. That means: Financing models that let farmers acquire equipment through cooperatives and pay-as-you-use schemes. Training 300,000+ SME operators on maintenance and fabrication to ensure machines don’t fail after one season.

Food security is not just about seeds and rainfall. It is about who owns the machines that plant, harvest, and process. For decades, Nigeria exported raw cocoa and imported chocolate, grew tomatoes and imported paste, raised the world’s largest yam output and imported starch. NASENI’s agric mechanization drive reverses that equation.

By building solar pumps instead of importing diesel ones, fabricating rice mills instead of buying them, and training technicians instead of hiring expatriates, NASENI is engineering a new link in Nigeria’s industrial chain. If Nigeria must feed 400 million people by 2050, it will not happen with hoes and imported tractors. It will happen when innovation meets the soil, and when the tools of prosperity are made-in-Nigeria, for Nigerians and by Nigerians.