Three entrepreneurs building businesses around these missing links | issue 148

Nigeria can grow more food and still leave farmers poor.

 

Because what happens after production matters just as much as what happens on the farm.

 

Who finances the farmer? Who connects harvests to reliable buyers? Who keeps fresh produce from losing value before it reaches the market?

 

In our latest edition, we follow three entrepreneurs building businesses around these missing links.

 

Uka Eje, Co-founder and CEO of ThriveAgric, is working on the financing, data and market-access problems that keep millions of smallholder farmers operating below their potential.

 

Ayodeji Balogun, CEO of AFEX, is building the market infrastructure that allows agricultural commodities to be aggregated, stored, financed and traded more efficiently.

 

Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu, Founder and CEO of ColdHubs, is tackling one of the costliest failures after harvest: keeping perishable food fresh long enough to be sold.

 

Together, their businesses raise a bigger question:

 

Why can farmers struggle to make money while consumers still pay high food prices in a country that produces so much food?

 

This edition goes beyond the farm to examine where value disappears across Nigeria’s food supply chain, the businesses trying to capture it, and where the next investable opportunities may be emerging.

 

Also inside: Yemisi Iranloye, Founder and CEO of Psaltry International, on why supporting farmers is not enough if nobody can buy what they grow; our Opportunity Watch on cashew, shea and industrial cassava; plus the numbers, deals and developments shaping Nigerian business.

 

Download this edition now for fresh insights into Nigeria’s agribusiness value chain.