AFEX launches #CodeCashCrop to boost finance, tech collaboration in agric


AFEX Commodities Exchange, the only private commodity exchange in Nigeria, recently launched the hashtag #CodeCashCrop at the CoCreation Hub in Yaba, Lagos.


According to Ayodeji Balogun, Country Manager of AFEX Commodity Exchange, #CodeCashCrop is designed to help participants get practical insights into developing for or investing in agriculture and also “have the invaluable social impact of putting smallholder farmers, who form over 90 percent of the exchange’s aggregation transactions and produce over 80 percent of our national food supply, in the spotlight as an addressable market segment.”

The launch followed a workshop hosted by AFEX in Lagos which brought together over 90 corporates and startups in the finance and technology sectors to interact with agriculture entrepreneurs to co-create a functional prototype for collaboration that nurtures the competitiveness of the agribusiness sector.

The workshop was organized in partnership with Dalberg Advisors, a global strategy and policy advisory firm, and the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) - the event will act as a nursery to cultivate private sector relationships in the nascent sector and connect different private sector players.

Balogun said “AFEX has been a functional exchange for over four years and has created access to markets that boosted the incomes of over 40,000 farmers by up to 40 percent over the period. There is so much potential to do a lot more when all elements of the economic ecosystem are able to find valuable use cases in the agriculture value chain with facilitation of cross-sectoral pollination of best practices.”

AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited (AFEX) enables the transition from production to transaction for agricultural commodities. AFEX is providing solutions to farmers’ challenges in aggregation, storage, financial inclusion as well as providing a ready market for both farmers and buyers to participate in, seamlessly and with trust embedded.

The exchange has reached 100, 000 farmers and aggregated over 100, 000 metric tonnes of grain since 2015 by helping to increase the bargaining power of farmers and creating access to new markets through warehouses in major trade hubs and crop production clusters in the North-West and North-Central while linking these communities to agronomic education, access to inputs & credit in addition to financial inclusion.


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