Imagine a farmer celebrating a bumper harvest, only to struggle to find a buyer offering a fair price. Somewhere else, a food processor has the capacity to purchase more produce but lacks the working capital to do so. Hundreds of kilometres away, a family walks into a market and finds that food remains more expensive than it can comfortably afford. All three are different realities for the same food economy, pointing to the fact that somewhere between the farm and the end user, opportunities are being lost.
For a continent with Africa’s agricultural potential, this is perhaps one of the most important economic puzzles to solve. Growing more food is necessary, but it is only one part of the equation. The real opportunity lies in building an agricultural economy where what is grown can be stored, processed, moved, financed and sold efficiently, creating value for the farmer, the businesses along the chain and, ultimately, the consumer.
Recent figures illustrate the scale of the challenge. Across West and Central Africa, cereal production for the 2025/2026 season reached an estimated 80.4 million tonnes, approximately 4% above the previous season and 7% above the five-year average. Yet an estimated 52.9 million people across the region were projected to experience crisis-level food insecurity or worse during the June to August 2026 lean season. Nigeria alone accounted for approximately 36.3 million of those people.
The wider continental picture reinforces the challenge. According to the United Nations’ State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2025, approximately 307 million Africans experienced hunger in 2024, even as global hunger levels declined.
- From opportunity to expansion: How Fidelity Bank FundHer supported Akara Café’s next chapter
- FHFL, Nigeria Police Trust Fund Break Ground on 257-Unit Affordable Housing Estate in Nasarawa
- Growtech West Africa, National Agricultural Development Fund(NADF) Partner to Strengthen Nigeria’s Agricultural Growth and Food Security
This distinction is critical: food availability does not automatically translate into food access or affordability. Conflict, insecurity, climate shocks and declining purchasing power remain significant obstacles. So do weaknesses in the systems that connect agricultural production to consumption.
Notwithstanding, those weaknesses also represent an enormous opportunity for transformation.
This broader understanding makes the theme of World Food Day 2026, ‘Innovate today. Nourish tomorrow’, particularly timely. Innovation in agriculture is often associated with sophisticated machinery, artificial intelligence or breakthrough seed technology. All have important roles to play. But sometimes, innovation is as practical as helping a farmer access affordable credit before planting, financing a warehouse that preserves the value of a harvest, or connecting a producer with a reliable buyer before the first seed goes into the ground. It is about making the entire agricultural journey more productive, commercially viable and financially sustainable.
Financing the Entire Food Economy
For decades, agricultural financing has presented a difficult proposition for traditional lenders. Unpredictable weather, volatile commodity prices, limited collateral and seasonal cash flows made the sector challenging to finance. In response, many financial institutions concentrated their lending in sectors offering more predictable returns. However, agriculture cannot become a commercially competitive industry if the capital required to develop it remains out of reach.
About 14 years ago, Sterling Bank made a deliberate decision to deepen its participation in the sector. Agriculture represented less than 1% of its loan portfolio at the time. Today, it is a central pillar of the Bank’s HEART strategy, which prioritises Health, Education, Agriculture, Renewable Energy and Transportation.
The scale of that commitment has grown considerably. As of September 2026, Sterling’s agricultural loan portfolio stood at approximately ₦322 billion, representing about 15% of its total loan book. This was an increase of roughly 30% from the ₦247.6 billion recorded at the end of 2025.
Over the years, the Bank has cumulatively disbursed approximately ₦1 trillion in agricultural financing to more than one million farmers and agribusinesses, while supporting the training of over 100,000 farmers in improved agricultural practices and digital tools.
These figures demonstrate the scale of the Bank’s commitment, but the more important story is what the financing is designed to achieve. Each investment strengthens a different part of the same system. Together, they help agriculture move from a collection of individual activities into a more connected and commercially viable industry.
Sterling’s interventions now extend across smallholder financing, structured commodity finance, poultry financing, women- and youth-focused agricultural products, and market-linkage initiatives. The ambition has evolved beyond simply increasing the volume of credit available to farmers. It is increasingly about making the entire value chain more productive and financially sustainable.
When the right partnerships change the equation
Agricultural transformation requires capital, but it also requires a better understanding of risk. Financial institutions do not have to carry every risk alone. They do, however, have to understand the risks well enough to structure solutions around them.
Sterling has pursued this approach through relationships with development finance institutions and partners, including the Development Bank of Nigeria, Mastercard, the International Finance Corporation, the Africa Agriculture and Trade Investment Fund and BlueOrchard.
A financing arrangement with the IFC illustrates the thinking. The structure combines a $20 million warehouse finance facility with an agricultural risk-sharing facility of up to $5 million covering a $10 million portfolio of loans to smallholder maize farmers in northern Nigeria through Babban Gona.
The significance goes beyond the funding amounts. The arrangement brings together several elements that make agriculture easier to finance: reliable buyers, improved commodity management, more structured lending and shared exposure to risk.
Rather than treating the farmer, the warehouse and the buyer as separate financing propositions, the model recognises their dependence on one another.
That shift in thinking matters. Stronger agricultural financing should create the conditions for more businesses to grow, more value to be retained locally and more producers to participate profitably in the food economy.
From conversations to commercial opportunities
Agricultural transformation extends well beyond any bank’s balance sheet. Government policy, infrastructure, research, technology, insurance, private investment and access to markets must reinforce one another.
This understanding has also shaped Agriculture Summit Africa (ASA), Sterling’s flagship platform for bringing together the institutions and businesses needed to accelerate the sector’s development.
At its ninth edition, held in Abuja in September 2026 under the theme Building the Next Superpower: Africa’s Food Power Play, the conversation moved beyond Africa’s agricultural potential to what it would take to convert that potential into greater economic value.
Co-convened with Sunbeth Global Concepts, the summit attracted more than 12,000 physical and virtual participants. Its Deal Room facilitated nearly 100 structured matchmaking sessions between agricultural businesses, investors and financial institutions, securing over $380 million in investment opportunities and surpassing its initial $300 million target.
These opportunities span production, processing, logistics, storage and other critical segments of the agricultural value chain, reflecting growing investor interest in building a more integrated, commercially viable and competitive African food economy.
Importantly, the opportunities under consideration extended beyond primary production into processing, logistics, storage and other segments where additional value can be created and retained.
That distinction is fundamental. Africa’s agricultural success should not be measured only by the volume of commodities leaving its farms. It should also be measured by the businesses that process those commodities, the jobs created around them, the industries they support and the share of economic value that stays within African economies.
The summit also provided the platform for Sterling to launch AgricHub, a digital ecosystem designed to bring agricultural businesses closer to financing opportunities, markets, knowledge and other value-chain participants. The platform reflects the next stage of Sterling’s agricultural strategy, using technology and partnerships to complement finance and strengthen the connections on which a thriving food economy depends.
Dr. Olushola Obikanye, Group Head, Agriculture and Solid Minerals Finance at Sterling Bank, captures the thinking behind this approach, saying, “Food security is not decided at harvest. It is decided much earlier, in the credit a farmer can access, the storage that keeps produce from spoiling, and the market waiting at the end of the season.”
His observation speaks to a broader recognition that agricultural transformation requires much more than isolated interventions. Financing a farmer matters. Connecting that farmer to a viable, functioning commercial ecosystem can make the financing significantly more impactful.
The future is already being planted
There is good reason to be optimistic about Africa’s agricultural future. The continent has enormous productive potential, a growing entrepreneurial ecosystem, an expanding market for food and increasing opportunities to deploy technology and capital more intelligently.
Realising that potential will require sustained investment, practical innovation and stronger collaboration between the institutions responsible for different parts of the food economy. It will also require treating farmers as participants in commercially viable enterprises, rather than simply beneficiaries of agricultural interventions.
World Food Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the work still to be done, but its 2026 theme also offers an invitation to think bigger about what is possible.
The next food revolution will certainly begin on farms. But its success will depend on everything we build around them.