Nigeria launches 10-year plan to revive coffee sector

Nigeria has begun a 10-year coffee revival with a blunt commercial goal: move a crop that produced about 1,809 tonnes of green coffee in 2024 into the kind of consistent, quality-driven supply specialty buyers will pay attention to. The plan was unveiled at the Cocoa Research Institute of Nigeria in Ibadan, where the Federal Government said coffee must become part of a broader push for diversification, export earnings and climate resilience.

The revival runs through the Nigeria Coffee Revival Initiative Steering Committee and stretches across 14 producing states, including Ondo, Cross River, Plateau, Ekiti, Oyo, Ogun, Osun, Edo, Abia, Imo, Kogi, Kwara, Taraba and Delta. That map matters because the government is not just talking about more trees. It is talking about a value chain, from improved varieties in the field to more local roasting, processing and branding so Nigeria is not left exporting raw beans and hoping for the best.

CRIN is the technical engine behind that ambition. The institute was established in Ibadan on December 1, 1964, has six substations across Nigeria’s geopolitical zones, and carries a mandate that covers cocoa, kola, coffee, cashew and tea. Its coffee programme says 64 Coffea arabica varieties are being kept in germplasm on the Mambilla Plateau for genetic improvement, and it has already identified four high-yielding Arabica varieties recommended for farmers. For Robusta, CRIN says it has recommended mixed-cropping systems, a practical sign that yield and farm resilience are being treated as part of the same problem.

The infrastructure question may decide whether this revival produces new origins or just new slogans. CRIN says it is distributing coffee seedlings, rooted cuttings and coffee berries through state ministries of agriculture in major coffee-growing states. It also says 1,000 seedlings of high-yield coffee and plantain suckers have been planted to rehabilitate an abandoned coffee farm, while its crop-improvement and crop-protection work is aimed at translating improved technologies into practice. That is the kind of hands-on groundwork buyers look for before they trust a lot number, let alone a new origin story.

The numbers explain the urgency. Nigeria’s coffee output has fallen far from its reported peak of about 6,000 tonnes in 1985, while BusinessDay put 2023 green coffee production at 1,844 metric tons and yields at about 500 kilograms per hectare. At the same time, Nigeria imported $3.48 million of coffee in 2024 and exported $13.63 million worth of coffee, tea, mate and spices. Coffee Festival International Nigeria 2025, held in Jos from August 28 to 30, showed the revival conversation was already moving through research and stakeholder circles before the steering committee launch. The next test is simpler and harder: whether Nigeria can turn policy, plant material and post-harvest discipline into lots a specialty roaster would actually put on a shelf.