Expert Urges Nigerians To Prioritise Packaging To Curb Post-Harvest Losses

LAGOS – Nigerians have been advised to give more attention to packaging as it is capable of reducing what the country loses yearly to post harvest.

Amb Ahmed Alex Umar, Global Ambassador for World Packaging Organisation gave the advice in an interview with Daily Independent, stressing that Nigeria can save the N3.5trillon it losses to post harvest yearly if the country is more serious about packaging.

He said that for most countries around the world, in their tertiary institutions, they offer packaging as a course that stands alone, that there is no Nigerian university that is offering packaging as a course.

“I school in Michigan State University School of Packaging, packaging stands as a complete faculty where people have to study packaging from a first degree up to PhD level.

“In Nigerian check, you will not find any tertiary institution in Nigeria that is offering packaging as a course. 

“I also offer here in Nigeria a one-year diploma in packaging technology, working in collaboration with the Institute of Packaging in South Africa and the Institute of Packaging Professionals in the US. These are globally certified courses that are recognised in about 63 countries.”

Umar, who is also the President, African Packaging Organisation, said that the country loses about N3.5trillion to post harvest losses, stressing that between the farm gate and the dining table, N3.5 trillion worth of food is lost.

He said that packaging will extend the shelf life of these foods.

“Packaging will help you move the food from the farm gates to the dining table, keeping it fresh the same way it left the farm. Extending life, giving you nutritious food to eat. The science, the technology and the art that is behind this to make it possible is called packaging.

“Putting products in a container; it could be pharmaceuticals, it could be clothes, branding them, giving them a name, giving instructions on how to use them, taking them from one point to the other and arriving safely. This is a layman’s way to explain.

“It has been here, not that it has not been here, but you know what they say, an educated man without a certificate is like one that has no education.

“So for us, we need to put down what we have been doing, document it and be able to transfer it. It is not that we have not been cooking, our grandparents have been cooking, but they don’t have cookery books. Our grandparents have been doing cassava in baskets, but these things are not documented.

“The same thing you have with our medicine, our traditional medicine is lost because they are not documented. So for people in the international community, we say, look, these people do not have a record. Just like they say, Mungo Park discovered River Niger, what about the people that were fishing there?

“Some of them say, we do not have packaging because we have not been able to document it. So this is what we are doing as a body, we are trying as much as we can to make this possible.

He said that the body is currently working with UNIDO and working closely with the government, that the conversation has reached a level where there is a need to pass an act of parliament for the National Assembly where it becomes like what is obtained in a more developed country.