By mercy Peter
Nigeria and other African countries must move beyond the export of raw commodities and take advantage of China’s zero-tariff policy to drive value addition, attract investment and create new wealth, the Executive Director of the Centre for China Studies, Charles Onunaiju, has said.
Onunaiju stated this in Abuja while speaking on the rationale behind a seminar organised to deepen awareness among Nigerian stakeholders on the opportunities presented by China’s concessional market access for African products.
He described China’s zero-tariff treatment for African products as one of the most consequential economic opportunities available to the continent, arguing that the policy could help address one of Africa’s longstanding development challenges: the inability to transform its abundant natural resources into higher-value products.
According to him, the central challenge confronting Nigeria and Africa is not simply the distribution of existing wealth but the creation of new wealth through value addition, industrialisation and access to larger markets.
“The challenge for us is to grow new wealth, new money. And zero tariff offers a roadmap to wealth creation,” he said.
Onunaiju argued that policies such as taxation and subsidy removal largely redistribute or recirculate existing resources, whereas productive investment and expanded market access can generate additional economic value.
He said the persistent gap between citizens’ legitimate aspirations for improved living standards and shrinking economic opportunities had contributed to insecurity and other social challenges across the continent.
“People to have better life is genuine. The challenge is the resources to do this are shrinking. And the result is the rise in insecurity,” he said.
He therefore advocated value creation, value addition and value multiplication as critical components of a strategy to address both economic and security challenges.
According to Onunaiju, the significance of China’s policy lies in its potential to unlock markets for African producers, particularly where producers have the capacity to produce but lack reliable outlets for their products.
He said greater access to the Chinese market could stimulate investment in processing, storage, logistics and other intermediary technologies required to develop functioning value chains.
“Most times it is not for want of what to produce, it is for want of markets,” he said.
He identified the non-reciprocal nature of the Chinese offer as another important feature, noting that African countries are not required to reciprocate by removing tariffs on Chinese products.
He also argued that the policy does not carry the kind of political or ideological conditionalities that, in his view, have limited the effectiveness of previous preferential trade arrangements.
Drawing a comparison with the United States’ African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA, Onunaiju said the framework had been affected by political and ideological considerations, which he argued contributed to its limited impact over the years.
He said China’s zero-tariff arrangement therefore represented an opportunity that should not be allowed to remain confined to government offices and official documents.
“Our motivation to hold this seminar is that this good news of zero tariff is too important to remain on the shelf of the bureaucrats. It is too important to be locked in the shelves of government offices. We want to take it out to the stakeholders,” he said.
The seminar brought together stakeholders across the agricultural and trade value chains, including farmers, traders and exporters, while representatives of the Chinese side provided explanations on how the market access arrangement could be translated into practical economic opportunities.
Onunaiju acknowledged that Nigeria’s trade relationship with China has historically been characterised by the export of primary commodities and the importation of finished and manufactured goods.
He said the zero-tariff arrangement could help reverse that pattern if Nigeria deliberately invested in processing and industrial production.
He maintained that guaranteed access to a large market would make investment in agro-processing and other forms of industrial production more attractive.
“People would like to export cocoa. People would like to process it. And by that way, they will make more money if it is processed,” he said.
He said the policy could therefore trigger increased investment in agro-processing, agro-industrial production and other activities capable of improving the value of Nigerian commodities before export.
To achieve this, however, he said Nigeria must establish an enabling policy environment capable of attracting and retaining investors.
Such measures, he said, should include improved financing, customs harmonisation, standardisation, efficient export procedures and greater institutional clarity.
He stressed that market access alone could not guarantee success.
“Market access does not in itself guarantee access. It does not in itself guarantee that we can fully exploit the market,” he said.
He called on the government to move beyond policy pronouncements and take practical measures that would enable businesses and farmers to utilise the opportunity.
“The ball is right in their court to move from rhetorics, to move from affirmations, to move from speaking great words to taking practical steps in engaging this process,” he said.
Onunaiju said the Chinese experience itself demonstrated that trade gaps could be narrowed through deliberate government support for domestic producers.
He said China had built its international competitiveness over time through investment in infrastructure, technology and productive capacity.
According to him, Nigeria must similarly support its producers so they can meet the quality, pricing and specification requirements of the Chinese market.
“What our people demand, the Chinese produce. So they keep asking for it. China has asked us to produce what our people want. So now is our time to respond in kind by producing what the Chinese want,” he said.
He described China’s population of about 1.4 billion people as a huge integrated consumer market that Nigerian producers should seek to penetrate through improved products and competitiveness.
He cautioned, however, that zero tariff could become a missed opportunity if Nigeria continued to depend mainly on primary commodity exports.
“Zero tariff can condemn you completely into one simple sector. And if you feel comfortable with it, then zero tariff didn’t take you too far,” he said.
, he said Nigerian producers must use the opportunity as an incentive to improve quality, introduce technology and move progressively from low-end production to medium- and eventually high-end products.
He cited China’s own development trajectory as an example of how a country could progressively move up the value chain while continuing to identify new markets for its products.
Onunaiju listed agricultural commodities including soybeans, sesame seeds, cashew nuts and cassava starch among products with significant export potential under the expanded access to the Chinese market.
He said the availability of a stable market could encourage farmers to increase production because they would have greater confidence that their products would find buyers.
He likened the opportunity to an assured market for agricultural producers, arguing that farmers would be more willing to invest in productivity when they were confident that their output would not be wasted or left without buyers.
However, he stressed that farmers and entrepreneurs could not deliver the transformation alone.
Government, he said, must complement private-sector initiative with financing, simplified export processes, efficient customs inspection, standardisation and effective quarantine procedures.
“Without policy incentives, by way of financing, by way of simplifying export process, by way of simplifying the custom inspection, by way of standardisation, by way of quarantine, if we don’t resolve all this, no matter the creativity of the ordinary farmer, the creativity of the ordinary industrialist, very little can be achieved,” he said.
He consequently called for a combination of entrepreneurial initiative and proactive government policy to ensure that Nigerian businesses were positioned to benefit from the Chinese market.
Onunaiju linked the effective implementation of the zero-tariff opportunity to Nigeria’s broader security challenges.
He argued that expanding legitimate economic opportunities, particularly for young people in rural communities, could help reduce the attraction of criminal activities.
“If the young kidnapper in Kaduna forest know that he could be a millionaire ginger farmer, I’m sure he would prefer to be a millionaire ginger farmer than to be a millionaire kidnapper that is on the run all the time,” he said.
He made a similar argument regarding banditry, saying productive economic opportunities could provide alternatives to criminal livelihoods.
According to him, expanding agricultural production, processing and market access could therefore have implications beyond economic growth by helping to create sustainable livelihoods and reduce some of the socioeconomic pressures that contribute to insecurity.
Onunaiju said the immediate task was for Nigeria and other African countries to develop the institutional and productive capacity required to translate China’s zero-tariff arrangement into tangible economic gains.
He warned that Africa had historically failed to fully exploit several international economic opportunities because of weak implementation, inadequate infrastructure, policy inconsistencies and insufficient institutional support.
“I do hope it will not be another African lost opportunity because we have lost so many along the line,” he said.
He urged the government, private sector and other stakeholders to treat the concessional market access as a strategic economic opportunity rather than another policy announcement.
“Our hope is that this will not be another lost African opportunity and we do hope that both the government and entrepreneurs will seize the moment and give practical effect to China’s zero-tariff concessional market access,” he said.
He added that the ultimate objective should be to use the arrangement to transform Nigeria’s production structure, expand exports, create new wealth and improve economic opportunities.
“I believe at this time we should, for once, take seriously this framework. Talk less about politics and talk more about creating wealth,” Onunaiju said.
