Seven years after Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde announced plans to export maize to Botswana, questions remain over how far the proposed deal progressed and why it ultimately collapsed.
Makinde first announced the initiative in May 2019, saying his administration was in talks with Botswana to supply maize. At the time, a Botswana delegation led by then Business Botswana President Gobusamang Keebine was in Oyo State.
“Our farmers will be happy to know that we are in talks with Botswana to export our maize to them,” Makinde said.
The plan was presented as an opportunity to create a guaranteed market for Nigerian farmers while supplying Botswana with maize.
But no publicly verified commercial exports followed.
Oyo State has now said feasibility studies showed that the state could not produce maize at the scale and price required to compete internationally.
The state also says a later decision by Nigeria’s Federal Government to allow large-scale maize imports disrupted local prices and further weakened the commercial case for the Botswana arrangement.
In 2020, Nigerian authorities authorised the importation of 262,000 tonnes of maize as the country battled shortages and rising feed prices.
However, Makinde’s earlier explanation focused less on the federal intervention and more on Oyo State’s comparative disadvantage.
In 2021, he said: “We discovered that we have comparative advantage in cassava,” explaining why his administration shifted away from the Botswana maize proposal.
He repeated a similar position in 2026, saying closer analysis showed that maize was not a crop Oyo could competitively export at the time.
The latest explanation therefore raises a key question: did the federal import decision derail the Botswana deal, or had Oyo already concluded that the economics simply did not work?
There are also unanswered questions on the Botswana side.
It remains unclear whether a formal agreement was ever signed, which Botswana institution was expected to buy the maize, what quantities and prices were discussed, or whether any trial shipments were made.
The available public record also does not clearly show whether Botswana withdrew from the proposed arrangement or whether Oyo State abandoned it after its feasibility studies.
Trade data shows Botswana was already importing significant volumes of maize at the time, with South Africa supplying the overwhelming majority of its direct imports.
