From time immemorial, the Philippines and Indonesia were the principal rice importers in the world. It is now over. From now on the country importing the most rice on the planet is African. It is Nigeria. This year, imports will hover around a million and a half tonnes.
This phenomenon is part of a general tendency. Africa, and West Africa in particular, imports increasing quantities of rice, a quarter of world trade. In Nigeria, the increase in buying is in large part understandable due to the considerable population of 120 million inhabitants. What is less understandable is that Nigeria boasts of its intention to reduce imports and respond to internal demand by local production. In order to do this, current customs duty is very high, 100% of the price per load. That would make the price of rice on the internal market so expensive that consumers would turn to local produce.
So much for the theory. In practice, the Abuja government is blowing hot and cold. At times, it asserts its intention to protect the rights of the national rice-growers. At other times consumers have priority, meaning that imports are allowed in. Moreover, Nigerian industrialists do not seem to have mastered the technique of parboiling rice, the only one eaten in the country, as in Saudi Arabia. All this has promoted the emergence of a corporation of importers from now on powerful enough to do without international traders or the multinationals. Business is done directly between Thai suppliers and Lagos wholesalers who are not interested in seeing Nigerian imports decrease in the slightest.