Nigeria’s growing population and demand for dairy

Nigeria’s growing population and demand for dairy

Nigeria has one of the fastest-growing populations in the world and it is projected to nearly double by 2050, from approx. 220m in 2023 to 400m. This will put enormous pressure on food systems to deliver affordable and nutritious food.

We believe dairy can play a key role in feeding the country’s population. However, local dairy production currently only covers about 40 per cent of the current demand for dairy. Our aim is to support the Nigerian dairy industry to grow.

Through different projects, our aim is to support the local dairy industry across the value chain to become more productive and more sustainable. The goal is to produce more milk of a higher quality more climate-efficiently and to make sure farmers have a solid route-to-market for their cows’ milk. In many cases, farm practices that improve a farm’s climate-efficiency will also improve overall efficiency and ultimately the farmers income will increase.

Our own state-of-the-art dairy farm in Nigeria

In 2023, we officially opened our very own farm in Kaduna state in Nigeria. Why does a dairy cooperative based in Northern Europe build a dairy farm in Nigeria? Because it’s much more effective to show what dairy farming best practice looks like rather than just talking about it.

In addition to being a fully-functioning dairy farm with more than 200 cows, the farm will host local dairy farmers to showcase our dairy farming expertise that’ll hopefully inspire other farmers.

The farm is used to facilitate training sessions for local farmers, students and associates at agricultural universities, veterinary students and other relevant groups. The main focus is sharing knowledge about farm management, animal welfare and sustainable farm practices based on Arla’s proven expertise.

The milk that the farm produces is brought to one of the two sites we operate in Nigeria to produce fresh dairy products locally in Nigeria.

Our own state-of-the-art dairy farm in Nigeria

Supporting nomadic farmers in Kaduna state

In Nigeria, there’s a strong tradition for dairy farmers to live as nomads, travelling from place to place with their cow herd to look for pastures for their cows to graze. However, settling in one place makes it easier to keep the cows well-fed and healthy, which will increase milk yield and income from dairy.

One of the other projects in Nigeria that we contribute to is about exactly that; The Damau Household Milk Farm project, which is a public-private partnership with Kaduna state. The state is establishing a 8,200 hectare ranch for 1,000 nomadic dairy farmer households, where farmers can settle down and improve their farming practices. Our role in the project is to support the farmers in the Damau project in their transition to more commercially viable and more sustainable dairy farming.

However, producing more and better milk only creates value if the farmer can sell it. That’s why we’ve committed to source the milk produced by the farmers in the Damau Household Milk Farm project for our local dairy production in Nigeria.

Supporting nomadic farmers in Kaduna state

Improving livelihoods for Nigerian pastoralist dairy farmers

The third pillar of our commitment to the development of the dairy sector in Nigeria is to support small farm clusters and cooperatives of traditional small pastoralist dairy farmers beyond the ones that are part of the Damau Household Milk farm project. The projects are about inspiring Nigerian dairy farmers to improve their income by increasing milk yield while producing it more climate-efficiently.

Since the Milky Way Partnership was initiated in 2016, we’ve held training sessions for a total of more than 2,000 registered dairy farming households and had the pleasure of hosting more than 25,000 participants out of which 30% are women.

To build a robust value chain, we’ve committed to buying the local farmers’ milk for our dairy production, so they have a reliable route-to-market for their milk.

The Milky Way Partnership is funded by the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs and done in collaboration with NGO Care Denmark, The Danish Agricultural and Food Council, Seges Innovation, Nigerian pastoralist organisation Coret and NGO Milk Value Chain Foundation. The project concluded in 2023, but has been succeeded by the Partnership for Green and Productive Dairy, a DANIDA-funded project which will run until 2028.

Improving livelihoods for Nigerian pastoralist dairy farmers
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