If you have invested time or money in Agriculture in Nigeria, here is a story that will resonate with your experience.
“Adamu (not real name) is a vegetable farmer in northern Nigeria. He grows onions, tomatoes, ball pepper and occasionally chili pepper. Recently, he decided to raise his game and invested in some greenhouses to help him serve a new group of customers. At least now, he can sell into the fast growing number of hypermarkets such as Shoprite, Justrite, etc. Once he started producing, he realizes that it takes considerable effort to grow these vegetables in the greenhouse but he is committed so he stays. As the flowers started sprouting, it occurred to him that he had not secured any customer yet so he starts running around the country looking to sign contracts with the hypermarkets which took a considerable amount of time. Going about doing this takes him away from the farm considerably and had some impact on his crops, loosing 10% of the crops but he figured he can bear the loss. He was however glad he could sign a contract with Shoprite. As he was about to harvest, he realized he has to transport the tomatoes to Lagos and hence, quickly starts looking for a cold-chain distributor but found none. The few cold-chain distributors for dairy and beef were asking for ridiculous amounts that will wipe away his margins. He decided to stick with using a regular truck. 15% of his produce got destroyed during transportation but eventually sold the rest to Shoprite. At the end of the day, Adamu was asking himself if it was all worth serving this new segment”.
In case you missed it, Adamu functioned as a farmer, a marketer, and a logistics agent. In the end, he lost up to 25% of his produce and ultimately got wasted himself during the entire process. This highlights the big dysfunction in the Nigerian agriculture value chain. Imagine the story played out differently as below.
“Adamu decided to go into greenhouse vegetable farming and he put in all his efforts to get maximum output from the farm. Once the flowers started sprouting, he called Ajoke Enterprises(AE) who markets farm produce to all major hypermarkets in Nigeria and AE goes to secure the contract with Shoprite and Justrite because of her expertise in engaging these type of clients. Once the fruits were harvested, Bello cold-chain company (BCC) was waiting at his gate to pick up the produce and deliver to Shoprite and Justrite in Lagos. At the end of the day, 95% of his farm produce made it to Lagos and Adamu did not move one day away from the farm.
This plays out differently depending on the sector in question and there is no doubt that the government has a major role to play here, creating the enabling environment. However, there is also a call for individuals and companies to start looking for ways to create market linkages through expertise building, hence helping all players to get a larger slice of a larger pie!
I am the author of Scaling for Success: Empowering African SMEs. I am a Partner at Sahel Capital, a food and agriculture-focused private investment firm in Sub-Saharan Africa. Sahel Capital manages the Fund for Agriculture Financing in Nigeria (FAFIN) and the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa (SEFAA).
I co-lead SEFAA, an impact-first fund investing in agribusinesses that provide direct or indirect benefits to smallholder farmers across 13 countries in Sub-Saharan Africa. I also lead investments and portfolio management for SEFAA and manage FAFIN portfolios, two of which were recently exited. I am a director on the board of one of the portfolio companies and serve in advisory roles for several startups and SMEs.