Financial Times London Interviews Ndubuisi Ekekwe

This week, I had a two-part interview series with Financial Times (FT) London. They had wanted my insights on precision agriculture innovation for a special report they are working on. I do believe that the Cambrian moment is here for agricultural technology and this redesign is unbounded by geography. Any decent-talent engineer can combine many of the APIs, software systems, IOTs, etc and come up with something that can have real impacts on animal and crop farming. Yes, even the local free-range chickens across African villages can be advanced to deliver more with technology.

The real challenge though is making money doing it: working with price-sensitive customers like most African farmers requires new business models. You have to invent something from scratch because anything they have abroad will not work. Why? The natures of our farming systems are totally different for the models and processes to be adopted without drastic adaptations.

Agtech remains one of the main areas I have noted which people can explore as they look for business ideas in Nigeria. Here is the complete list of exciting business ideas in Nigeria at the moment. Read them for some insights and perspectives as you plan for a mission into gross margins.

• Agro fintech: creating financial solutions geared for the agriculture sector with the use of technology like apps, web apps, AI, blockchain, etc. These will include agro-lending, agro-insurance, agro-trading, etc. FarmDrive, a Kenyan enterprise, connects unbanked and underserved smallholder farmers to credit, while helping financial institutions cost-effectively increase their agricultural loan portfolios

Finally, when FT runs the piece, I will share. Of course, they can put it under paywall cutting out many of us, including my humble self, as FT is a subscription-based newspaper.

Register for Tekedia Mini-MBA (Feb 10 - May 3, 2025), and join Prof Ndubuisi Ekekwe and our global faculty; click here.