Cross River unveils seven-year coffee roadmap to diversify economy
Cross River unveils seven-year coffee roadmap to diversify economy
The Cross River State Government has unveiled a seven-year coffee development roadmap aimed at diversifying the state’s economy, boosting non-oil exports and creating thousands of jobs through large-scale coffee production.
The Commissioner for Agriculture and Irrigation Development, Johnson Andiambey, disclosed this during a press briefing in Calabar yesterday where he outlined the state’s strategy for developing a sustainable coffee value chain between 2024 and 2032.
According to him, the initiative, tagged the “Coffee Revolution,” is designed to complement the state’s cocoa industry while positioning Cross River as a major coffee-producing hub in Nigeria and Africa.
Andiambey said Governor Bassey Otu had approved the distribution of 30 million coffee seedlings to smallholder farmers over the life of the strategic plan, noting that the program would cover about 27,000 hectares of farmland.
He explained that the first phase of the project began in 2025 with one million seedlings before it was temporarily suspended due to the end of the planting season, adding that the state would now commence the distribution of four million seedlings during the current planting season.
