Nigerian Company, Hill Crest Agro Allied, Ramps up Job Creation Efforts

As has been severally discussed, over the last six decades, Nigeria’s oil boom brought along with it increased revenue for the country led to a shift in focus from other previously thriving sectors like solid minerals and agriculture.
Now, as the global dependence on crude oil and its derivative products wanes, Nigeria is having to look again at these abandoned sectors to address growing rising unemployment and increased poverty. One of the homegrown corporate institutions helping the country lead the charge towards agriculture is Hill Crest Agro Allied Industries Limited.
Hill Crest Agro-allied Industries, a leading agricultural produce processing company, currently owns and operates a 14MT per hour (75,000MT per annum) rice processing mill, which produces parboiled head rice and delivers to the final customer through a wide network of distributors across Nigeria.
In the third quarter of 2018, Nigeria’s unemployment rate stood at 23.1 percent of the total work force, up from 18.1 percent a year earlier. Also, a new update on The World Poverty Clock shows Nigeria has overtaken India (with seven times the population of Nigeria) as the country with the largest number of extreme poor people in the world.
The extent of the worsening employment and poverty situation across Nigeria is well documented and addressing these issues is the focus of the country’s economic recovery plan as well as other well-meaning private organizations and businesses.
Nigeria’s economic recovery plan identifies six priority sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, and solid minerals, including iron, gold and coal. Of these sectors, there is increasing evidence that agriculture can contribute to poverty reduction beyond just direct impact on the revenues accrued to farmers. Increased activity, investment and productivity in agriculture will increase revenue and provide employment opportunities across the value chain in both rural and urban areas.
According to Emmanuel Tarfa of Hill Crest Agro-Allied Industries Limited “Agriculture is a viable way to eradicate poverty whilst solving the problem of hunger and malnutrition in the country. Tarfa opines that investment in agriculture will help to increase rural farmers productivity and income, open the industry for other value chain development and thereby creating more jobs and employment for the country’s teeming population.
Tarfa further explains that while public sector investment is key in eradicating poverty because it makes available public goods such as agricultural research and extension, education, infrastructure and services usually not supplied by the private sector – private investments have a strong role to play in helping create markets for the poor, adding value to primary agricultural products, lowering the costs of technologies and services and fostering decent rural employment. The public sector also provides crucial incentives for the regulation of sustainable management of natural resources.
Public investment can also help to stimulate the positive conditions on the ground that can attract further private investment, both from the rural communities themselves and from the corporate private sector. The latter has a multiplier effect on the local economy. These benefits include generating demand for food and other rural goods and services. This will in turn create more employment opportunities for poor rural people, including those without access to land.
“In addition to investing in agriculture, the fight to reduce poverty will also require investing in rural non-farm economies, strengthening of rural institutions and organisations, and expanding the coverage of social policies social protection, basic infrastructure and public services,” adds Tarfa.
To further explore agriculture for poverty eradication and job creation, the country will need to improve access to technologies, services and markets, as well as access to and sustainable management of natural resources for poor rural people, including smallholders and family farmers, to increase their productivity and income in the context of mitigation and adaptation to climate change.