African Indigenous Crops and Its Impact on Wheat Imports

Sub-Saharan Africa imports 70% of their wheat consumption and the trend is steadily climbing with the availability of the cheap imports. Observing this trend, Government started putting trade barriers to promote the domestic wheat industry. Nigeria has increased the wheat import duty from 5 percent to 20 percent from 2012. They also announced a 65 percent levy on wheat flour imports, increasing the effective duty to 100 percent.� Either way the bread prices have shot up more than 20%. As the population is also increasing exponentially, Africa will have to look into alternative options to meet the demand. Using flours made from local sources are being studied for fully or partially substituting wheat flour. Processing industry especially the flour industry is still evolving in Africa, as most of the feedstock goes in to cooking, brewing or is consumed as such. This will be a major challenge to overcome. This article talks about the various commodities that can be used for substituting wheat flour and how the dependence on wheat can be reduced.   Author: Rosemary Joseph