Lagos State has opened a new fresh food hub in Agege, and the government projects more than ₦5 billion in food transactions there each year.Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu commissioned the facility at Pen Cinema on Wednesday. Lagos built the hub to improve food storage, trading and distribution across the state.
The Agege hub sits on about 7,000 square metres. A 4,000-square-metre trading floor can hold between 350 and 400 vendors.The facility also carries about 1,200 square metres of dry storage, with room for roughly 800 metric tonnes. Its cold storage section holds about 300 metric tonnes.
Lagos added a seafood section, parking for up to 90 vehicles and 10 electric vehicle charging points to the site.Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems Abisola Olusanya said the state expects the hub to generate more than ₦5 billion in annual food transactions. She based that projection on the hub’s trading capacity and expected produce volume.
The hub will run at full capacity in about six weeks, once the state finishes onboarding operators and setting up logistics.Sanwo-Olu said Lagos houses more than 25 million residents and sources over 70 percent of its food from outside the state, figures the state government itself estimates.
That dependence exposes Lagos to transport costs, storage problems, supply disruptions and price swings, the governor said. The state wants its food hubs to shorten the distance between producers, traders and consumers.
Lagos already runs food hubs in Mushin and Abijo. It plans more facilities in Opebi, Ikorodu, Bombata, Apapa, Festac and the Lekki axis.
The Mushin Fresh Food Hub, which opened in December 2023, recorded more than ₦4 billion in transactions across 228 market days, according to figures Sanwo-Olu cited. The facility also counts more than 850 registered vendors.
Lagos is building a larger Central Food Systems and Logistics Hub at Ketu-Ereyun in Epe to anchor the network. The government says the Epe facility will handle more than 1.5 million metric tonnes of food a year and serve over 1,500 food trucks daily. It will include warehouses, cold and dry storage, processing facilities and logistics bays.
Construction has reached an advanced stage, the state says, and it plans to commission the facility before Sanwo-Olu’s administration ends.
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Lagos has also tied the food hub programme to its ₦500 billion Produce for Lagos Offtake Guarantee Fund, which it launched in 2025. That programme aims to connect farmers with structured demand in Lagos.
For traders and food-processing SMEs, the Agege hub could cut one of the sector’s biggest risks: losing perishable goods before sale.
Cold storage buys traders more time to sell products that would otherwise spoil fast. Organised loading areas and storage can also ease some of the logistics problems traders face in informal markets.The hub could open opportunities for farmers, wholesalers, processors, transporters, retailers and other businesses across the food supply chain.
The commercial impact, though, will hinge on how much traders pay to use the facility, how easily smaller vendors gain access, and whether the hub can consistently pull in enough buyers and produce. Those details will matter more to SMEs than the size of the facility itself.
Olusanya said traders will keep control of their own prices and payment arrangements. The government and hub managers will handle infrastructure, operating rules and oversight.
The state has built a 351-page operating framework covering vendor selection, storage, quality control, sanitation, inventory and waste management.Full operations will give the first real test of whether the Agege model can lower distribution losses while hitting the transaction volume the government projects.
