Entrepreneur tapping into Nigeria's cocoa opportunity
One entrepreneur capitalising on Nigeria's cocoa potential is John Alamu, founder of Johnvents Group, an agribusiness and manufacturing firm.
Nigeria’s cocoa industry is emerging as a key driver of economic diversification. With growing global demand and surging investments, the sector could unlock new revenue streams and strengthen the country’s non-oil economy.
One entrepreneur capitalising on this potential is John Alamu, founder of Johnvents Group, an agribusiness and manufacturing firm. Johnvents this month announced a $40.5 million investment from British International Investment to boost its cocoa production.
Nigeria’s cocoa sector holds immense potential, yet the country’s export capacity remains underutilised. This investment will enable Johnvents Group to scale up its processing capabilities, meet growing global demand, and position Nigeria as a competitive player in the international cocoa market.
Alamu’s journey began while he was a monitoring and evaluation specialist at the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA). He started by offering microloans to 10 farmers – a number that eventually swelled to a thousand. Spotting a gap, he began buying harvests (maize, soya beans, sorghum) from these farmers – his loan clients – and selling to larger regional agents. Margins were thin, though, so he explored cash crops. In 2016, with Nigeria facing a severe foreign currency shortage, cocoa’s forex potential stood out. After trading the crop, Alamu seized an opportunity to move into processing by acquiring a local cocoa factory.
It trails Côte d'Ivoire, the global leader with over 2.3 million tonnes, followed by Ghana (653,000 tonnes), Indonesia (641,000 tonnes), Ecuador (375,000 tonnes), Brazil (296,000 tonnes), and Cameroon (295,000 tonnes).
Unlike global competitors that invest in processing, most African nations export raw cocoa, missing out on the industry's real value. The global cocoa market was worth $45 billion in 2019 and is set to reach $61 billion by 2027, yet Africa captures only a fraction, according to the International Cocoa Council.
The tide is, however, slowly changing, not just in the volumes of production and pricing dynamics but also in terms of the investment flow into the country.
Shortages in the global markets, especially disruptions in Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana, also accelerated cocoa exports from Nigeria.
The latest (2025) data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reveals that cocoa accounted for 7.12% of total agricultural exports, making it the best-performing crop of the year. Key export destinations included the Netherlands, Malaysia, Belgium, and Germany.
Notably, the NBS statistics for Q4 of 2024 show the oil sector, a conventionally dominant sector, contributed less than 5% to the national GDP, with non-oil economic activities surging in the quarter under review. Agriculture, for instance, contributed 25.59%.
In a 2025 interview on The Guardian, a Nigerian news outlet, Dominic Joshua, the founder of Cultivate Africa, an event organised by the Africa Union Commission with partners, noted that if the trend continues, “cocoa can generate more revenue than oil in the next decade... But the time to act is now”.
Additional reporting by Bonface Orucho, bird story agency