Nigeria is preparing to force its cashew crop through domestic factories for processing, but cannot say how large that crop is. The Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment puts output at 300,000 to 350,000 tonnes a year, whereas FAO data show it falling to 80,944 tonnes less than two years ago.

The ministry unveiled a national cashew roadmap on 15 July built around a minimum 30 per cent value-addition requirement before export, alongside a Nigerian Cashew Project Office to be run with the agriculture ministry, the National Cashew Association of Nigeria and GIZ, the German development agency. More than 85 per cent of the crop leaves the country unprocessed, according to the ministry.

The FAO series, accessed via Cropli, describes a smaller and shrinking sector. Nigerian cashew production peaked at 101,500 tonnes in 2019 and has fallen every year since, reaching 80,944 tonnes in 2024 – down 19 per cent. That ranks Nigeria 12th in the world, behind Guinea-Bissau, and at under a tenth of Côte d’Ivoire’s 944,673 tonnes.

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Planted area has not moved. Nigeria’s harvested cashew area rose to 170,224 hectares in 2024 from 131,529 hectares in 2015 but has been effectively flat since 2020, making the decline a yield problem rather than an acreage one. The government’s own roadmap lists ageing plantations, inadequate seedlings and weak quality standards among the sector’s constraints.

Nigerian estimates do not agree with each other either. A February release from GuarantCo, the credit guarantor backing a new processing plant, put the crop at 250,000 to 300,000 tonnes. Ojo Ajanaku, national president of NCAN, told THISDAY earlier this year that Nigeria produced 600,000 tonnes and processed 20 to 30 per cent of it. In July the same association told FreshPlaza the crop was 350,000 tonnes and that less than 10 per cent was processed.

Ajanaku has conceded the point himself. “That is why we cannot get accurate figures of actual production,” he told THISDAY, in comments alleging that foreign operators bypass official export documentation to avoid repatriating foreign exchange. “You hear figures of about $400 million coming into the country, but it could be much higher.”

What can be measured from the buyer’s side is small and, until this year, growing. EU imports of shelled cashew nuts from Nigeria under HS code 080132 rose to €20.03mn in 2025 from €8.18mn in 2022, according to Eurostat figures accessed via Cropli. The 145 per cent increase put Nigeria seventh among the bloc’s kernel suppliers for the first time, though three of the six above it are EU member states re-trading imported nuts.

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That advance has stalled. EU imports from Nigeria ran at €3.17mn in the first five months of 2026, down 35 per cent from €4.89mn in the same period a year earlier. Imports from Côte d’Ivoire over the same five months rose 34 per cent to €95.1mn.

Nigeria’s raw nuts do not go to Europe at all. EU imports of in-shell cashew under HS 080131 total between €6.5mn and €9mn a year and are almost entirely intra-EU re-trade; shipments from Nigeria are negligible. Cardinal Torch, a Nigerian agro-commodity trader, puts the share of the national crop sent to India and Vietnam for processing at 80 per cent.

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On that side of the trade, Nigeria is losing ground on price. Vietnam imported 49,507 tonnes of Nigerian raw cashew nuts in May, worth about $79mn and down from 69,728 tonnes a year earlier, according to General Department of Vietnam Customs data reported by FreshPlaza. Côte d’Ivoire shipped 107,090 tonnes over the same month, up 93 per cent. Nigeria’s export benchmark was $1,600 a tonne against Côte d’Ivoire’s $960.

Rows of workers stand at metal sorting tables inside a large cashew processing hall, grading shelled kernels by hand

The capacity being built to absorb the crop is modest so far. Cardinal Torch announced a 4.5bn naira ($3.3mn) plant at Shagamu in Ogun State on 1 August with a nameplate of 10 tonnes a day, to be commissioned in the first quarter of 2027 and funded through a 10bn naira commercial paper issue under a 30bn naira programme. Robust International, a Singapore-based commodity trader, is building a plant in the same state under a $75mn facility guaranteed by GuarantCo, taking its group capacity to 220 tonnes a day from 100.

“We’re moving from just exporting raw cashews to processing them locally,” David Olurin, Cardinal Torch’s managing director, said at a media briefing last month.

The policy direction is established elsewhere in Nigerian agriculture. Raw shea nut exports were banned in August 2025 under a measure since extended to 25 February 2027, and raw cocoa bean exports were banned in July. “Nigeria will no longer export raw beans while importing finished value,” Abubakar Kyari, the agriculture minister, said in Abuja on 14 July, delivering President Bola Tinubu’s address to a cocoa value-addition summit.

No comparable instrument has yet surfaced for cashew. The 2026 Fiscal Policy Measures, approved on 1 April and summarised by the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service in a report published on 14 May, contain no cashew provision and no export levy or prohibition of any kind; the document deals exclusively with import tariffs.

Vietnamese processors are already paying for the trend. Vietnam imported more than 3.12mn tonnes of raw cashew nuts worth over $4.67bn in 2025 and supplies as much as 80 per cent of world kernel exports, according to Vinacas, the Vietnam Cashew Association. African suppliers banning raw exports at the start of the season, setting minimum export prices or raising levies on raw shipments have made those imports harder and more expensive, the association said.

NCAN opposes a ban. “It does not make economic sense to endanger five million livelihoods in an attempt to create 35,000 jobs,” the association told THISDAY, arguing that processors borrowing at 25 to 35 per cent cannot carry stock through a harvest window of three to four months that requires up to nine months of storage. It has asked lenders for facilities at 3 to 5 per cent. “Our farmers cannot be made to subsidise processing in disguise.”

No independent public series measures the crop the policy is aimed at. The USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service, which publishes annual tree nut assessments for most significant producers, has never issued one for Nigerian cashew: a search of its 22,056 published GAIN reports returns none from the country on the crop.