Dawanau grain market strengthens West Africa’s food trade

NIGERIA – Northern Nigeria’s Dawanau International Grain Market continues to play a key role in West Africa’s grain trade, linking producers, traders and buyers across several countries while helping shape regional food prices.

Located on the outskirts of Kano in Kano State, the market opened in 1985 along the Kano to Katsina corridor through the efforts of Nigerian politician Alhaji Uba Ahmed. Over the years, it has grown into one of Africa’s largest grain trading centres, covering about 42 square kilometres with more than 10,000 shops and over 600 warehouses that can hold around 150,000 tonnes of grain and other farm produce.

Every day, thousands of traders, transporters, warehouse operators, brokers and other workers conduct business at the market. Major commodities traded include maize, sorghum, millet, rice, beans, cowpeas, groundnuts, sesame, soybeans, cassava and potatoes.

Dawanau’s location has helped make it an important meeting point for regional trade. The market sits about 240 kilometres from Maradi in Niger and about 600 kilometres from the Chad border. Traders from Burkina Faso, Niger, Chad, Cameroon and Benin regularly bring crops to the market while also sharing information about supply, demand and prices in their home countries.

This steady exchange of goods and market information means price changes in Dawanau often influence grain prices across neighbouring countries. Markets in Niger, in particular, show a close link with price movements recorded in Kano.

The World Food Programme also uses data from Dawanau to monitor changes in the prices of staple foods such as millet, maize and sorghum and to better understand food market trends across the region.

The market has also shown that cross border agricultural trade in West Africa remains active and well connected through long standing business networks. As weather shocks, insecurity and population growth continue to affect food supply, Dawanau is expected to remain an important link between surplus and food deficit areas.

Its growing importance comes as the World Bank urges West African countries to strengthen their rice sectors to reduce dependence on imports. Speaking during the Rice Investment Roundtable held in Accra, Ghana, Chakib Jenane, Director of the Planet Department for West and Central Africa at the World Bank, said, “West Africa has considerable agricultural assets. The challenge is not so much their absence as their underutilization. To progress, it is no longer enough to move forward in small steps. We must structure farms, group producers on larger and more mechanizable areas, and give them greater access to credit.”

Jenane added, “The goal is to build a high-performing ecosystem around rice. In countries like Senegal, Mali, and Nigeria, yields per hectare are already comparable to those seen in Asia. But producing more is not enough: we also need to improve storage, processing, and marketing. Ultimately, to succeed, the entire West African rice value chain must be competitive with imports.”

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