On a Friday morning in May, a tired Omosehin Adekanle stared at a heap of palm kernels at her milling store in Okitipupa, a town in Ondo State, and a major palm oil-producing area in Nigeria. The 45-year-old woman had spent the night at the store with her workers ahead of a delivery deadline.

The team of workers, including six women and five men, had extracted seven oil drums (1.4 metric tonnes). However, Mrs Adekanle needed to supply 20 drums, and time was not on her side.

“Five customers are waiting for supplies from this production,” said the exhausted woman. “We worked overnight, having started by 8 a.m. yesterday. We didn’t sleep.”

Women are the main players in the palm oil industry in Okitipupa. However, lack of access to capital constrains their trade. Mrs Omosehin’s mill has only a “presser” and a “digester.” One of the machines is old and no longer efficient in extracting oil from palm kernels, forcing her to revert to traditional processing methods.

“More machines would have fastened and expanded our production, but I can’t afford them,” she said. She had no idea how to access a loan to buy the equipment needed to upgrade her mill. A consequence is the regular failure of delivery appointments.

High local demand, low production

A 2019 report by PwC revealed that Nigeria consumed approximately 1.34 million metric tonnes of palm oil in 2018, which accounted for about 44.7 per cent of the country’s total fats and oils consumption that year. This makes Nigeria the largest consumer of palm oil in Africa. As of 2023, Nigeria produced an estimated 1.4 million metric tonnes but continued to import to meet rising domestic demand, expected to reach 1.44 million metric tonnes by 2026, at an average annual growth rate of 0.7 per cent.

Recklessness and neglect

Okitipupa used to produce palm oil on an industrial scale following the establishment of the Okitipupa Oil Palm Company (OOPC) in 1968. The company had plantations in many parts of the state for palm kernels, its primary raw materials.

At its peak, the company employed 10,000 workers and was a major player in Nigeria’s palm oil industry in the 1990s. OOPC produced palm oil, palm kernel oil, and other products such as crude palm oil, technical oil, pharmaceutical stearin, palm wine, brooms, seedlings, ashes, and brown s