We are at the 2022 finish line, and we are pleased and proud to look back fondly on all the memories, accomplishments, and highs of the year as we are spurred on to set even more ambitious goals in 2023.

At AFEX, while we have long been committed to closing the opportunity gap in Africa’s commodities ecosystem, this year significantly changed the context in which we operate, positioning us to really make our mark in the commodities landscape throughout the continent. In 2022, we established a foothold in different African markets starting with Kenya, thus, accelerating our African vision to expand, digitize, and innovate on our uniquely AFEX operations across the continent.

We collaborated across different sectors and key players in the value chain to gather new perspectives and extend our impact in transforming lives in the agricultural value chain. We also dwelt a lot this year on building infrastructure and implementing educational initiatives that can deliver even greater value to producers, processors, and investors, and get us to the future we have imagined.

In this roundup article, we are happy to share with you some of the notable highlights and historic milestones this year that were incredibly special to us because of how they helped us stay the course and even brought us closer to the future that we're so excited about.

African expansion

This year, we embarked on a forward-thinking mission to enable seamless pan-African commodities trading by expanding our operations to Kenya. It was important to replicate our success in Nigeria to other countries in providing access to logistics delivery, advisory services, inputs, and access to the market in the value chain while bolstering Africa’s food security.

As part of the expansion, AFEX Fair Trade Limited Kenya (AFTL Kenya) launched a $1 million loan program that allowed 5,000 Kenyan farmers access quality seeds and fertilizers for higher yields and increased income earnings in the market. We are delighted to have enabled 80% of the farmers who approached AFTL Kenya for input loans as we continue to help Africa feed itself while making further plans to unlock prosperity for more farmers in more countries such as Uganda, Benin, Ghana, Ethiopia, and more.

FT Ranking as first Africa’s fastest-growing company

2022 was truly historic and one of our favorite moments was when we came in third place on the Financial Times’ fastest-growing companies in Africa list, coming first place in Nigeria and in the Agriculture & Commodities Category. This achievement detailed our 4289.795% absolute growth over a period of 4 years. It also reinforced our commitment to creating a more inclusive and profitable ecosystem that works for everyone.

The FT’s Africa Fastest Growing companies list comprised innovative, modern, and fast-growing companies that are driving forces of the international economy in the 21st century. We are honored to have been near the top of the list of 75 companies spotlighted from thousands of entries.

AFEX 100,000MT/ year Grain Quality Enhancement Center

Recognizing food sustainability and post-harvest storage as one of the biggest challenges encountered in the sector, we launched a new 100,000MT/ year Grain Quality Enhancement Center and 30,000 MT storage capacity warehouse at Zaria-Kano Highway, Kaduna State. This is in addition to over 150 warehouses we have across grain-producing states in Nigeria. The new infrastructure, which was commissioned by His Excellency, the Governor of Kaduna State, Mallam Nasiru el-Rufai, would meet the challenges of grain quality enhancement in Nigeria through cleaning, grinding, heating, drying, packaging, and storage services for grains like maize, paddy rice, and soybean.

With this new facility, we are leveling the playing field for food producers, manufacturers, and processors to gain access to quality commodities, minimizing post-harvest losses, and enabling better access to the market at fairer rates.

Code Cash Crop 3.0

2022 was the year in which we dove even deeper into boosting youth participation in the commodities market through the third edition of AFEX’s Code Cash Crop (CCC) event. Themed “Disrupting Agriculture Trade Infrastructure”, CCC 3.0 was aimed at identifying and producing solutions that bolster sustainable and inclusive trade opportunities leveraging the potentials of three key sectors – Agriculture, Finance, and Technology – and an ag-hackathon as a major component to drive that.

The event brought together next-generation innovators, business professionals, entrepreneurs, Agric specialists, investors, development partners, and policymakers in the three sectors to identify innovative and viable solutions to Africa’s Trade Infrastructure issues in a series of panel discussions, mentorship sessions, and network meetings. In the end, three finalists were awarded a sum of N5 million among other incentives.

One million Cocoa project

In another major development for food sustainability and the growth of the entire agricultural ecosystem, we launched the one million Cocoa Tree Planting Initiative across cocoa-planting regions in Nigeria. The overall project will see us plant one million trees, and we began by first distributing 200, 000 cocoa seedlings to cocoa farmers. The seedlings were a product of 12 years of research and were able to produce 5 times the yield of earlier varieties used.

The project was commissioned by His Royal Majesty, Ooni Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi, and is a long-lasting collaboration for value creation in cocoa production to improve economic resilience and livelihoods of cocoa farming communities.

Launch of Data-driven crop production reports and a comic book

We launched 2 major reports and a comic book – the AFEX 2022 Annual Commodity Outlook, the 2022 Wet Season Crop Production report, and Tradvers. We recognized the need to close the data gap in Africa’s commodity market and give solid market intelligence to major stakeholders to make the best-informed trading decision.

On the other hand, we launched Tradvers, a financial literacy comic book to provide institutional and retail investors with simplified investment knowledge on the capital market, especially commodity-backed investments in a fun and relatable way. These reports are available on our website for your perusal.

$240 million Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP)

Another major headline in our books for 2022 was the reopening of AFEX $240m (₦100bn) Asset-Backed Commercial Paper (ABCP) to help stabilize Nigeria’s agriculture sector by offering Agro-processors low-cost financing to bridge the funding gap between lenders and borrowers. This year, we raised an additional $175 million, and also closed out series 1 of the total $240m program.

MOU signing with NG Clearing Limited for Commodity Derivatives

One of the notable partnerships we formed was with NG Clearing Limited to deepen the market and unlock financing options and alternative investment classes for capital market players in the ecosystem. The collaboration will see that we develop infrastructure that would facilitate trading and central clearing of futures contracts, especially derivatives for commodities in the coming year.

AFEX Food Security Fund

In 2022, we launched a $100 million 10-year bond food security fund to enable farmers to produce as much as three million metric tonnes of food annually on the continent. This year, we took it a step further with the introduction of programs to help Africa achieve food security, sustainable and inclusive industrialization, and shared prosperity by 2030, by providing robust and impact-driven capacity-building activities, community support.

AFEX Bar Raisers and Tech Stars

This year, we also launched two graduate internship programs, the AFEX Bar Raiser and AFEX Tech Star programs to develop the experience and skills of young graduates from the start and set them up for a brighter future in today’s competitive job market. With over 30 recruits, the aim for us was to essentially increase the talent pipeline, not in terms of quantity but the quality of the people that join the organization on a yearly basis. We created job opportunities for young Africans who were passionate, energetic, and creative to join AFEX and lead the vision of building a sustainable, inclusive, and efficient market system for commodities.

2022 has truly been a remarkable year for us at AFEX. We are fortunate to have incredible partners and stakeholders supporting us in our mission to transform Africa’s food systems. we have great things planned for 2023 and beyond and we look forward to what we can accomplish together in these coming years.