A significant part of my work involves structuring facilities, assessing risks and building credit cases for businesses across Nigeria's agricultural and non-oil export value chains. But sometimes, if you are not intentional, you start relating more to the spreadsheet than the sack. More to the tonnage figure than the actual commodity sitting in front of you. A recent warehouse visit was a firm reminder: the numbers are always downstream of reality.
We talk a lot about risk in financial services. But many of the factors that actually determine whether a transaction succeeds or fails are not sitting inside a financial model. They are sitting in warehouses, on processing floors, inside aggregation centres, sometimes inside a single handful of grain. What grade is the commodity? How is it stored? What is the moisture content? What operational controls are in place? Who is actually running this operation, and how? These are not just technical questions. They are banker questions. My questions.
A contact sport
I have come to believe that agro-commodity trade finance is a contact sport. You cannot effectively finance what you do not understand. You cannot structure what you have not seen. And you cannot genuinely advocate for a sector you are only willing to engage with from behind a desk. So yes, I got into the warehouse. I picked up the palm kernel. I inspected the cocoa bags. I asked questions, took notes, exchanged ideas with the team on the ground, and I left with even greater conviction about what is possible within Nigeria's agricultural value chains.
Behind every bag is a farmer who planted, an aggregator who sourced, a logistics chain that held, and an exporter taking a calculated bet on global markets. Our role as financiers is to make that bet possible. Nigeria sits on an agricultural goldmine, yet we still export much of our produce in raw form and import value-added products at a premium. Closing that gap will require more than capital. It will require structure, infrastructure, partnerships, and people willing to understand the business beyond the paperwork.
To every processor, aggregator, exporter, warehouse operator, logistics provider and farmer working across this space: I see the work. The early mornings. The quality checks. The difficult decisions. Too often, people see the finished transaction. They do not see the people who built it. And to anyone in financial services reading this: get into the field. Visit the warehouse. Walk the floor. Meet the people behind the numbers. You will make better decisions because of it. The field will always teach lessons that the file never can.