Posted on December, 11, 2024 at 08:41 am
Ayodeji Balogun’s life’s work is driven by a singular passion: to bolster food security across the African continent. As a pioneering force in the region’s agricultural development, he co-founded AFEX, a revolutionary agricultural, finance, and technology-based exchange. Since its inception in 2014, AFEX has made a profound impact, supporting over 500,000 smallholder farmers, processing over 500,000 metric tons of grain, and generating a turnover of over $300 million. Currently operational in three African countries, AFEX ambition is to extend its reach to several countries on the continent over the next decade. This strategic expansion is driven by the identification of unique opportunities in the agricultural market and the selection of trade hubs that will facilitate seamless intra-African trade. At its core, AFEX is committed to enabling efficient trade coordination across the continent, ultimately bridging the gap between Africa and the global market. As AFEX continues to drive transformative change in Africa’s agricultural landscape, Ayodeji Balogun’s unwavering dedication to food security and economic empowerment serves as a powerful catalyst for growth, innovation, and prosperity _ with Onome Amawhe.
Can you give us an overview of AFEX?
We started AFEX in 2014 with a resounding vision from our founding investors: to unlock capital for the smallest unit of business in Africa—smallholder farmers. Enmeshed in that vision was a quest to contribute to food security in Africa and to explore the commodity exchange model as a path to efficient and inclusive trade.
As a business, we have recorded a number of wins over the years. We especially hold dear our impact towards producers, and we have reached over 500,000 farmers over our operational locations since we started up. We have also unlocked over $400 million in financing for the agriculture sector on the continent during that period.
Today we are in 3 African countries, with a timeline to hit 10 total countries over a 10-year timeline. Our goal is to be a fundamental engine for intra-Africa trade coordination and make it truly seamless for Africa to trade across borders and ultimately for the rest of the world to trade with Africa.
Read also: Firm partners FG to champion Nigeria’s food security initiative
What is food insecurity?
Food insecurity deals with questions of access and affordability. It’s a complex mix of challenges that make it impossible to get sufficient, safe, and nutritious food to meet dietary needs and live healthy, and it most definitely is a problem that require a complex web of players collaborate to solve.
What makes Africa vulnerable to food insecurity?
We have produced more people than the food we will use to feed them. Our value creation in agriculture has declined because we processed more food in decades past than we do today. This is a multiplier effect that has made the sector almost a poverty center. It is nearly an ill fate to be born by a smallholder farmer on the continent because immediately opportunities are not available for you.
Also, we have taken agriculture as a means of poverty eradication, and the result of that approach to agriculture has been creating fewer poor farmers.
The underlying thing is still that they are poor farmers. We have not created wealthy farmers as a continent over the last 3/4 decades. The last time we made wealthy farmers was in the early eighties, when we started seeing the continent’s entire market infrastructure collapse. Three decades after that, all farmers have remained poor. If you look at our production of food per capita, it has declined significantly.
To what extent do the food production and distribution systems in Africa reflect local needs, culture, and conditions?
We have families who are into their third generation of farming, handing down knowledge from generation to generation, but also increasingly extension support programs are coming in to teach more modern and adaptable techniques. So it really is a mix, just as it should be. The big change that needs to happen across most African societies is the departure from the idea of agriculture as a core subsistence activity. More farmers treating agriculture as a business and plugging in to the networks that support that are vital for us.
Source: Business Day