Until 1960, Nigeria was the world's largest exporter of palm oil — about 43% of the world market in 1956. The crop was managed largely as wild groves, with low oil-extraction ratios and Dura-type fruit (thick shell, low kernel).
The West African Institute for Oil Palm Research (WAIFOR), founded at Benin in 1939, demonstrated by the 1950s that crossing Dura mothers with the shell-less Pisifera produced Tenera progeny with very thin shells, larger mesocarp, and 30–40% higher oil yield. WAIFOR became NIFOR after independence and ran the breeding programme through the EWS (Extension Work Seed) series — EWS 1, 2, 3, 4 — released from the 1960s through the 1990s.
Malaysian planters obtained Tenera seedlings from West Africa, including from NIFOR's seed gardens, in the late 1950s and 1960s. They planted on industrial scale. By 1980 Malaysia had overtaken Nigeria; by 2000, Indonesia had overtaken Malaysia. Both countries built downstream refining, oleochemical, and biodiesel industries.
Nigeria's own NIFOR-supplied estate programme — the Nigerian Oil Palm Limited plantations of the 1960s, the Risonpalm estate, the cooperative-smallholder schemes of the 1970s — was repeatedly orphaned by Cold War-era policy reversals, the Civil War, the 1970s oil boom (which reorganised every export incentive), and structural adjustment.
Nigeria today produces about 1.4 million tonnes of palm oil and imports about 800,000 tonnes more. Indonesia produces about 47 million tonnes from Nigerian-derived seedlings.