The Federal Government is presenting its one-million-hectare tree crops expansion programme to European cocoa industry leaders and investors in Brussels, as it seeks investment into Nigeria’s cocoa and other agricultural value chains.
The presentation is scheduled for Thursday, October 29, at the Nigeria/West Africa Cocoa Origins–EU Industry Match-Making Forum, held on the sidelines of the Nigeria–Belgium-Luxembourg Business Forum, according to a joint statement by the Agribusiness and Productivity Enhancement Project Management Office in the Vice President’s office and the EU–Nigeria Agribusiness Platform.
The forum is organised under an EU Global Gateway grant with support from the European Cocoa Association, whose members account for about 95 per cent of Europe’s cocoa grinding capacity. It comes ahead of the European Union Deforestation Regulation, which applies to large and medium-sized operators from December 30, 2026, and which requires traceable, deforestation-free supply chains.
The government says Nigeria has more than 350,000 cocoa-farming families cultivating over 1.4 million hectares. The expansion is designed to add tree-crops farmland under a traceable, deforestation-free framework, with long-term offtake agreements and co-investment in processing facilities on offer to European investors.
Kingsley Uzoma, Senior Special Assistant to the President on Agribusiness, said the programme offers investors “a plan, not a promise”, with new cultivation areas mapped and traced from the first seedling.
Sources: The Nation; Leadership
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