Interview with Chief Executive Officer, Agrecourse, Ayoola Oluga
What does it take to be a successful entrepreneur in the agricultural sector?
First, I would like to clarify that success is relative. Some entrepreneurs view success as the amount of money they can make. For me, it is the number of lives I can impact positively. That said, passion is the number one factor required to succeed within Nigeria’s agricultural space. Passion is that intense enthusiasm that you exude in achieving a set goal. Passion is the most important trait of a successful entrepreneur as passionate entrepreneurs love what they do. They are willing to go the extra mile to make the business succeed because there is a joy that their business gives which goes beyond the money. For us at Agrecourse, we are all about the number of lives we can transform as we leverage on technology- driven initiatives. Furthermore, for you to succeed in Agribusiness, you must learn to be decisive because timeliness is key. You must also be resourceful, persistent and disciplined.
On the Challenge of Capital
As an asset management professional, weaving my passion and skills in an intricate strategy laced with carefully nurtured human relations and human capital, we have been able to navigate this challenging terrain recording as much success as we can even as we hope and work towards greater impact and greater coverage.
On Key Driving Force to Becoming an Entrepreneur
Above everything else, the strong desire to solve a problem and impact people’s lives. Before venturing into agriculture, I discovered that one of the major problems smallholder farmers in Nigeria have continued to face is access to finance to boost their farming operations. Most farmers operate at the subsistence level and it has been like that for many years. This situation has greatly affected food production, farmers’ income, employment and agriculture contribution to economic growth. As a finance professional, getting into agriculture was mainly about how I could help smallholder farmers gain access to finance, with a goal of achieving food security. In a quest to help the farmers secure access to finance, we decided to harness the power of many and developed a web-based crowdfunding platform to help smallholder farmers raise the funds they require to purchase quality inputs, thereby improving their farming operations. With this platform, individuals and organisations that are able and willing to sponsor these farmers, get to invest in real agricultural projects and monitor all farming activities remotely through our monthly updates. In recent years, food production has not kept pace with population growth, thereby causing food insecurity. It has also been said that population will increase in the next few years, so there is an urgent need to help achieve food security so that people do not starve. At Agrecourse, our plan is to help create a world with enough food for everyone.
On Business Expansion Plans
Our original mandate was to help smallholder farmers gain access to finance. Efforts to expand the business are underway, as we are currently increasing our capacity in the various value chains to reach out to more farmers. We are also stepping up in the area of helping more farmers gain access to markets. The whole idea is to reach as many farmers as possible, such that farmers that do not benefit from one area can benefit from the other. Apart from these two areas, (access to finance and access to markets), we are working on a few other things which we prefer to keep on a low for now until we are ready to launch the product.
On Policy Expectations from Government
First, the government should make funding easily accessible to agribusinesses, regardless of what part of the value chain they chose to operate. Currently, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) has mandated commercial banks to give out a large chunk of their deposits as loans. It will be fantastic if the CBN can go a step further by telling these banks to commit a good amount of these loans to agribusinesses. Secondly, policies that will encourage local production and discourage importation should be put out by the government. With the border closure and federal government’s directive prohibiting banks from giving out forex for food importation, I would say so far, so good. Thirdly, the government needs to consider the adoption and application of innovations in agriculture to make the sector more competitive and sustainable. Finally, the government should collaborate with the private sector. The role of government is indirect and should be more of a facilitator, while the private sector should be allowed to manage.
On When You Had the Right Idea
According to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United
Nations, the agricultural sector has continued to face many challenges, notably an outdated land tenure system that constrains access to land, a very low level of irrigation, limited adoption of research findings and technologies, high cost of farm inputs, poor access to credit, inefficient fertilizer procurement and distribution, inadequate storage facilities and poor access to markets. All these issues have combined to keep agricultural productivity low with high post-harvest losses and waste. Having participated in agricultural projects in the past and seeing some of these challenges faced by smallholder farmers, we knew the idea of helping to solve some of these problems was a good one. We decided to help tackle the problems of access to finance and access to markets. We are still building our team. We have specific kind of people in mind and we hope to get them into the company soon enough. Hopefully, they will help achieve the company’s mission and vision. On Corporate Social Responsibility So far, we have been able to impact the lives of over 1,000 farmers across seven states, and through our access to market scheme, another 2,500 farmers. From rice, maize, poultry to fishery, we have done several projects and financed farmers to the tune of over N400 million in the past one year.