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 Ebokpo, disclosed this on Monday during a chat with journalists in Calabar, 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.
He said, “Governor Bassey Otu had approved the distribution of 30 million coffee seedlings to smallholder farmers over the life of the strategic plan. The programme would cover about 27,000 hectares of farmland. It is designed to complement the state’s cocoa industry while positioning Cross River as a major coffee-producing hub in Nigeria and Africa.”
He explained that the first phase of the project began in 2025 with the distribution of one million seedlings before it was temporarily suspended due to the end of the planting season.
