By Oluwatobiloba Gideon Oludayomi
This is actually part 2 to my previous article: Opportunities in Agriculture Young Nigerians Keep Sleeping On
I want you to sit down for this one, because the numbers are almost embarrassing.
Nigeria produces close to 4 million tonnes of tomatoes every year. Yet the country loses nearly half of that harvest before it ever reaches a plate. Nigeria loses 45 percent of its 3.9 million tons of tomato harvest annually due to post harvest waste and supply chain inefficiencies. That means out of every ten baskets a farmer works hard to grow, almost five never get eaten. They rot in the open, on the road, or in a market stall, while somebody somewhere is still importing tomato paste with foreign currency we do not have enough of.
Industry sources estimate the value of that yearly waste at around 72 billion naira, lost between farm and market. Let that number sit in your spirit for a second. Seventy two billion naira is not pocket change. That is a whole economy quietly rotting away every single season, because nobody thought to preserve what the earth freely gave.
And this is not new. Farmers have been shouting about it for years. One Kano tomato grower explained that about half of harvested tomatoes are lost whenever there is a glut, simply because storage and processing capacity cannot keep up with the harvest. Prices sometimes crash so low that a big basket sells for a fraction of what it cost to grow, and farmers watch their sweat decay in front of them because there is nowhere to keep it and nothing to turn it into.
Here is the part that breaks my heart the most. This is not a shortage problem. This is a preservation problem. God did not fail Nigeria on tomato. Man failed tomato on storage.
I think of the story of Joseph in Egypt. Genesis chapter forty one tells us he did not wait for the famine to arrive before he acted. During the seven years of plenty, he gathered and stored grain, so that when scarcity came, the nation still had bread. Joseph's wisdom was not in growing more. It was in preserving what was already grown. That single principle, if applied to tomato in Nigeria today, could change entire households.
Now here is where I want you to lean in, because this is where opportunity is hiding in plain sight.
You do not need a factory to solve part of this problem. You need a food dehydrator, which is simply a drying tool that removes moisture from fruits and vegetables without destroying their nutrients. Some of these tools are small enough to sit on a kitchen table, and they are not as expensive as people assume once you compare the cost to what you stand to earn.
Here is what you can do. Buy tomatoes in bulk when there is a glut and prices are low, which is exactly the season when farmers are struggling to sell and losing money. Wash them, slice them, and dry them using the dehydrator until all the moisture is gone. Once dried, grind them into a fine powder. That powder can be stored for months without spoiling, unlike fresh tomato which finishes in days.
Package that powder in small, clean containers or sachets, and sell it to your neighbours, your church members, your estate group, and local food sellers who cook daily and want convenience. A woman who runs a small canteen does not always have time to peel and blend fresh tomatoes every morning. A scoop of your tomato powder into hot water gives her the base she needs in seconds. You are not just selling a product. You are selling her time back to her.
Think about the arithmetic. A basket of tomatoes during a glut can sell for as low as five to ten thousand naira in some markets. That same basket, once dried and powdered, can produce multiple sachets that you sell individually over weeks, not days, at a combined value far higher than what you paid for the fresh produce. You are not creating new tomatoes. You are simply refusing to let the ones already grown go to waste, and Nigeria is paying 72 billion naira a year for that exact refusal not to exist at scale.
This is the kind of business a young person can start from home, with a small dehydrator, some clean packaging, and consistency. You do not need government contracts. You do not need foreign investment. You need to see the tomato that everyone else is stepping over, and treat it like the raw material it actually is.
Proverbs chapter twenty one verse five says the plans of the diligent lead to profit, as surely as haste leads to poverty. Slicing, drying, and grinding tomato is not glamorous work. It will not trend online. But diligence rarely trends. It simply pays, quietly, season after season.
I will ask you again, because this question deserves an answer. Look around your own community. What is being wasted right there that you have simply stopped noticing. Tomato is only one example. What is yours? Tell me in the comments, because someone else reading this might need to hear it from you, not from me.
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Oluwatobiloba Gideon Oludayomi is a life coach, a practical writer, and a versatile entrepreneur creating wealth solutions through agriculture, real estate, and enterprise. He is the Convener of the Dominion Guild Network, an ecosystem of high value individuals, young and determined to becoming an empowered generation. He is the author of "Build It to Last", "I Thought I Married a Wife", a novel, and "Practical Love".
