The numbers coming out of the SAPZ mid-term review in Abuja this week tell two different stories depending on which ones you look at first.
The ambition side: 500,000 direct and indirect jobs per participating location, agricultural productivity potentially rising from under 10 per cent to as high as 100 per cent, post-harvest losses cut from 45 per cent to 20 per cent, and a second phase already in preparation covering additional states. Development partners including the African Development Bank, IFAD, and the Islamic Development Bank are involved. IFAD just approved an additional $50 million, bringing its total commitment to $100 million.
The execution side: the programme received AfDB approval in December 2021. Implementation only began in March 2023. As of March 2026, the commitment rate stands at 41 per cent and actual disbursement at 12 per cent. That means roughly $25 million of a $209 million programme has actually moved. The permanent secretary of the agriculture ministry acknowledged slow fund disbursement, procurement delays, prolonged approval processes and sluggish infrastructure development in the same breath as the programme’s targets.
Nigeria loses roughly 45 per cent of its agricultural output to post-harvest spoilage every year. Farmers grow food that rots before it reaches a processor or a market because the cold chain does not exist, the roads are unreliable, and there is nowhere nearby to add value to raw produce. SAPZ is designed to fix exactly that, by clustering processing facilities, storage, logistics, and market access in zones built around areas with strong agricultural potential. The model is sound. It has worked in other contexts. Ethiopia’s industrial parks and Rwanda’s special economic zones demonstrate what structured agro-industrial investment can produce when implementation keeps pace with design.
The 17,000 farmers reached in Kano and Ogun states and the 9,000 who have received improved inputs are real numbers representing real people. They are also a fraction of what the programme promised by this point in its timeline.
The AfDB’s task manager expressed optimism that commitment rates would reach 70 per cent and disbursement 35 per cent by the end of 2026. Those would be meaningful improvements. Whether the procurement systems, state government readiness, and infrastructure development can accelerate enough to hit those marks is the question that the mid-term review was convened to answer honestly.
Nigeria has enough agricultural potential to feed itself and export significantly into the continental market. The SAPZ programme is one of the more coherent attempts to unlock that potential systematically. What it needs now is less reviewing and more building.
