On a quiet street corner in Kano, a woman named Amina sits under a faded umbrella, shaping crunchy, golden spirals of kuli-kuli from freshly roasted groundnuts. It’s a craft she learned from her grandmother, who sold the same snack at the local market half a century ago.
The recipe hasn’t changed – just groundnuts, salt, and fire – yet the context around it has. Where once her small batch-fed neighbours and passersby, today it’s part of a growing wave of consumer demand for healthy, natural, locally made snacks.
From Lagos to Jos, Nsukka to Maiduguri, the same scene plays out with small differences: plantain chips sizzling in palm oil, spiced coconut flakes drying in the sun, or cassava crisps bagged by hand for sale on dusty shelves.
These are Nigeria’s indigenous snacks – a rich, flavourful part of our culinary story – but they have long been dismissed as “low-end,” “informal,” or “too local” to matter in a modern economy.
That mindset is changing. And in that change lies one of the most overlooked growth stories in Nigeria’s food economy.
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From Street Corners to Supermarkets: The Rise of Local Snacking
Snacking is no longer just about convenience – it’s about health, identity, and experience. Across the world, consumers are rejecting ultra-processed, imported snacks in favour of options that are more nutritious, traceable, and culturally authentic. Global demand for healthy snacks is expected to reach $152 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of over 6.6%.
Nigeria, with its youthful population (over 60% under the age of 25) and rising urban middle class, is part of that trend. The country’s snacks market is already estimated to be worth over ₦500 billion ($320 million) and growing rapidly. Yet, most of that value is captured by imported brands – from potato chips to candy bars – even though local alternatives often outperform them on nutrition, sustainability, and flavour.
“We’ve underestimated the snack economy because we’ve underestimated ourselves,” says Ifeoma Eze, a food systems economist. “Our local snacks are not just food; they’re vehicles for nutrition security, rural income, and cultural storytelling.”
The Forgotten Power of Traditional Snacks
The irony is that many Nigerian snacks – once seen as “poor man’s food” – are exactly what global health trends are demanding.
Kuli-kuli, made from groundnuts, is rich in plant-based protein and healthy fats.
Coconut chips and tigernut snacks are gluten-free, high in fibre, and appeal to paleo and keto consumers.
Plantain chips are a low-sugar, potassium-rich alternative to conventional potato crisps.
Cassava-based snacks cater to the growing demand for gluten-free, indigenous grains.
These are not just nostalgic street foods – they’re functional snacks with real nutritional value, capable of competing with, or even outperforming, imported products on global shelves.
But while the world is ready, most of Nigeria’s snack makers are not. They remain informal, undercapitalised, and disconnected from the infrastructure that could help them scale. Packaging, shelf-life extension, food safety standards, and brand storytelling – these are often the missing links preventing a local favourite from becoming a global export.
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The Industrialisation Gap: From Micro Kitchens to Mass Markets
At the heart of the challenge is formalisation and scaling. Most local snack producers are micro or small enterprises – often run by women and youth – with limited access to finance, machinery, or distribution networks. Their snacks are delicious but lack the branding and quality control needed to penetrate supermarkets, let alone foreign markets.
And yet, examples of transformation are emerging.
Nutzy, once a small Nigerian peanut butter producer, has scaled its operations and distribution nationwide, proving that local nuts and snacks can compete with global brands.
Pally Agro has invested in plantain chip production with modern packaging, now selling in major retail chains across West Africa.
Export-ready startups are experimenting with coconut snack bars, tigernut flour bites, and cassava crisps designed for diaspora markets.
These stories reveal a blueprint: with the right investment in processing, certification, storytelling, and market access, Nigeria’s snack sector could transform from a fragmented informal activity into a multi-billion-naira industry.
Snack Local, Grow National
There’s a deeper logic to this than just business. Local snacks are agriculture in edible form. Every stick of kuli-kuli connects back to groundnut farmers in northern Nigeria. Every pack of plantain chips sustains growers in Ondo and Edo. Every coconut ball keeps coastal economies alive.
Scaling the snack industry means building value chains that sustain thousands of farmers, processors, logistics providers, packagers, and retailers. It also means reducing our dependence on imported snacks, keeping more foreign exchange at home, and strengthening the naira by exporting branded, value-added products rather than raw materials.
More importantly, it builds soft power – embedding Nigerian culture in products that travel across borders and live on supermarket shelves from London to Nairobi.
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A Call to Action: The Snack Revolution Starts Here
The future of Nigerian snacks won’t be written in street stalls alone – it will be shaped in incubation hubs, processing clusters, export readiness programmes, and brand storytelling studios.
Imagine a Lagos-based “Snack Lab” where local entrepreneurs access shared facilities for roasting, packaging, and certification. Picture a national “Made in Nigeria Snacks” label that signals authenticity and quality to consumers at home and abroad. Envision private equity firms backing indigenous snack brands poised for global growth.
This is the vision of Go Local: a coordinated push to turn local materials – not just in fashion and beauty, but in food – into globally competitive products. It’s about taking pride in what we grow, make, and eat, and building entire industries around it.
The Final Bite
In the 1970s, few believed that a humble Italian flatbread called pizza could become a $160 billion global industry. Fewer still thought a peanut-based spread would turn into a $4 billion category called peanut butter. Nigeria’s snacks – rooted in centuries of tradition, rich in nutrition, and bursting with flavour – deserve the same chance.
The story of “snack local, snack healthy” isn’t just about eating better. It’s about thinking bigger – about seeing every handful of kuli-kuli, every strip of plantain chips, as a building block for an economy that is creative, inclusive, self-reliant, and proudly Nigerian.
Because the next billion-dollar brand could be born not in a foreign lab, but in a small kitchen like Amina’s – where the scent of roasted groundnuts still carries the taste of our future.
