AgroCola White Paper 01This suggests that Nigeria is sitting on a goldmine of unprecedented...

AgroColaWhite PaperAn Introduction to AgroCola

www.agrocola.com

The Future of Agriculture Youth . Scalable . Sustainable

AgroCola

Synopsis

/agro'cola/

noun

is the pseudonym for an integrated Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP) and Micro, Small, Medium

Enterprises (MSME) intervention that is focused on the youths. AgroCola seeks to focus the ABP's

effort on millions of educated youths to pivot exponential impact, positive perception and

sustainability in Nigeria's agriculture and food production.

This document outlines our plans for a new system that supports the engagement of youths in

agriculture, a financing and smart digital platform that will create new opportunities for youths to

innovate and develop Nigeria's agriculture.

1Extrapolating simply from the World Bank's projection of Africa's food market reaching US$1 trillion in

the 10 years to 2030, Nigeria's contribution will grow to about US$250 billion in the same period. If

things remain as they are in the way Africa's food supply is currently organized, about 84% or US$210

billion of supply to the projected US$250 billion food market in Nigeria will be imported. Furthermore, 2by way of inferring from an AfDB report on youth employment, in the same 10 years to 2030, 110

million African youths will join the labour market, 20 million of them will be young educated Nigerians

and they may not find jobs.

Nigeria's youths can be rapidly well equipped

with finance and digital technology that can

be purposed to support homegrown supply

to the increasing demand for food in Nigeria.

This has further potentials of growing the

economy, conserving and earning foreign

exchange, providing productive economic

engagement and jobs while returning hope to

the youths of Nigeria.

In the four years to 2024, AgroCola seeks to

effectively drive the engagement of 2 million

Nigerian youths in agriculture by using an

integrated effort of digital technology,

financing and partnership platforms. At

capacity, this holds the potential to create a

minimum of 8 million jobs, 16 million Metric

Tons (MT) of export quality and global standard agricultural produce of 6 trillion Naira value with a

potential for about 20% annualized growth.

3The youths are already engaging in pockets of technology supported agricultural production,

therefore, AgroCola provides an opportunity for policy makers and interventions to galvanize multi-

dimensional support for these pockets of efforts within the framework of existing agricultural sector

support efforts. This will deliver exponential impact and results, especially now that it is well

understood that agriculture is crucial to Nigeria's long-term economic sustainability.

AgroCola White Paper | 01


1. Executive Summary

Nigeria is considered a youthful country and one of the countries with the largest number of young

people within the working population. This suggests that Nigeria is sitting on a goldmine of

unprecedented opportunity commonly referred to as “Demographic Dividend” – defined as a

transition of the age structure towards more working-aged adults, which has the potential to

accelerate increased productivity and economic growth, given the availability of the right contributing

factors.

However, the reaping of the “Demographic Dividend” is not automatic and the World Economic Forum

in 2014 warned that the demographic dividend represents a one-off opportunity window which will

not last forever. It therefore means that Nigeria’s youthful and working population is a dynamic and

static asset. The maximization of its economic benefits is time-bound and can only happen if the

human capital or asset is provided with productive activities.

Nigeria is currently facing an upsurge in youth unemployment, and as much as the government is

doing its best through various intervention programmes like “NPower”, it still calls for strategic

attention, nevertheless, the benefits of demographic dividend is aggressively being wiped out. With an

average age of a farmer and level of education under the CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme (ABP)

put at 41 years and primary education respectively, there is an urgent need for intentional and

aggressive agripreneurship drive that creates a space for youth inclusion and empowerment – This

can be rightly captured as Anchor Borrowers Programme with a Demographic Dividend (DemDiv)

Model.


The focus of this White Paper centres on how Nigeria can simultaneously leverage the untapped

reservoir of opportunities in agriculture to seize the window of opportunity of its “Demographic

Dividend” and address the major pain point of youth unemployment and agriculture digitization:

Whilst applauding the success of CBN’s Anchor Borrowers Programme so far, it highlighted the

skewed distribution of ABP farmers against a major force and potentially impactful demographic

group within the population - the youth. These are the critical mass of population with the capacity to

employ technology to drive more productivity and they are being left out. Besides, the fact that young

and educated youth are more likely to face difficulties securing full time employment or completely be

idle makes it an economic and social imperative.

The White Paper therefore relied on the National Bureau for Statistics report for Q3, 2018 to show that

the youth are clearly in the majority. Whether they live in the cities or in rural villages; whether they are

from middle-class backgrounds or from vulnerable homes, one thing is certain - these young people

have high expectations and the untapped reservoir of opportunities in agriculture is the most

immediate means of generating income and employment for large numbers of young people.

The African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) recently signed by Nigeria creates an

opportunity for Nigeria to prominently play in African market and become Africa’s food basket. The

tech-savvy youths are the ones with the capacity to use digital technology to support exponential

growth and scale agricultural production.

Then, we introduce “Agricultural Collaborations” (AgroCola) which seeks to galvanize an integrated

youth-led participation in the agricultural value chain within the existing ABP framework. The vision is

to create the enablers of the conditions for youth agripreneurship, by onboarding 2 million educated

youths as farmers (with their own farmland or will be allocated farmland), who would use digital

technology to access best agricultural practices to achieve higher productivity, 20,000 agribusinesses,

8 million farm jobs, 100,000 agribusiness jobs, with monetary valuation put at 1.6 trillion farm gate

produce and 6 trillion in entire value chain productivity.

Overall, the White Paper exhaustively justifies the urgent need to re-jig the ABP to reflect demographic

perspectives; to put it bluntly – it needs to be made youth-led for it to achieve better results. The 2016

Youth Agribusiness, Leadership and Entrepreneur Summit on Innovation advocated for governments

and organizations to mainstream youth entrepreneurship in agriculture, the 2014 African Union

Malabo Declaration on Accelerated Agricultural Growth and Transformation for Shared Prosperity

and Improved Livelihoods, committed member states to job creation for at least 30% of youth in

agricultural value chains, and the 4th Principle for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food

Systems, championed the engagement and empowerment of youth by advancing their access to

extension, advisory, and financial services including new technologies.

There is therefore a consensus that agriculture has the potential to generate great income generating

and job opportunities to millions of youth.

2. Introduction

3. Problem Statement: Are We Missing An Opportunity?

4. Available Opportunity

The Anchor Borrowers Programme is one of the farthest-reaching agricultural transformation policies

and intervention in Nigeria. Its efforts have disbursed over 120 billion Naira that have directly reached

over 1 million farmers, while providing thousands of jobs and expanded business opportunities for

agribusiness concerns across Nigeria.

Even though the ABP’s effort has been far reaching, the distribution of the beneficiary farmers has

been skewed against a major and potentially impactful demographic group-the youth.

20 million educated Nigerian youths may not find jobs in the next 10 years, thereby making them turn

to digital platforms for legal and illegal proclivities such as gambling-which engages about 18 million

18-35-year-olds in spending over 3 billion Naira per day. This seems to be their only hope, which

usually doesn’t materialize, leaving a trail of further frustrated youths.

4The typical profile of the 1 million farmers supported so far by the ABP is a 41-year-old man with

primary education. This highlights a missed opportunity to address the major pain point of youth

unemployment in Nigeria. The youths-between ages 18-35 years old make up 30% of the population

and 36% of them are unemployed, whereas, the average ABP recipient represents only 4% of the

population.

By engaging the youths, the ABP will reach a bigger demographic pain-point, bring about deeper and

more pervasive impacts, with the potential of unleashing the productivity and innovation of youth for

better multiplier effects, long term productivity and sustainability.

4In a 2018 study on the potentials of youth engagement in Agriculture in Nigeria, 76% of youths

responded in the affirmative when asked the question “will you engage in information technology

supported commercial agriculture if you are provided with the necessary support”: Targeting youth

led farming and agribusinesses will give the ABP enhanced immediate outcomes, long-term

economic impact and positive perception in Nigeria, Africa and beyond.

A youth focused agriculture sector intervention presented Nigeria with an opportunity to provide

both sustainable food security and youth productivity with the same effort. The outlook can further

target the African food market which is estimated to reach 1 trillion dollars in 2030 (World Bank). If

excellently executed, the prospect from Nigeria can compete and potentially upturn the 84% of

Africa's food supply that is currently imported from outside Africa. The newly signed African

Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA) further creates opportunities for Nigeria to prominently

play in the African food market as Nigeria has an abundance of youth manpower, arable land and

potential of digital technology to support efficient exponential growth and scale in agricultural

production for the African market while solving some of the problem of the about 110 million youth

that are project to not have jobs in Africa by 2030.

Educated young farmers will adopt best agronomy and extension practices more readily than non-

educated older ones, adopt farm and digital technology, will be open to engaging young farm

hands and youth owned agribusiness in retail areas such as input supply, logistics and aggregation.


Their digital technology supported operations will

help to provide management, efficiency, situational

awareness across the value chain, generate real data

for policy and plans and create positive perception

and reportage through new media.

We believe that if 2 million educated young farmers

are engaged to cultivate 2 million hectares across

grain value chains, 8 million jobs and up to 16m

Metric Tons (MT) of grains at 840 billion Naira

farmgate value (105,000 average price per ton) could

be produced by the youths per farming cycle.

The youth are better positioned to achieve multiple

farming cycles per annum as they will adopt

technology, digital agricultural support and market

access capabilities that will improve production value

to N1.6 trillion. This productivity numbers translate to

about 1.6 million Naira and 480 thousand Naira per

capita, outperforming existing minimum wage jobs

that most youths are currently jostling for.

Agricultural Collaborations (AgroCola) seeks to galvanize an integrated youth led participation in the

value chain areas of agricultural production within the existing ABP framework. AgroCola will target 2

million youths in farming, 20 thousand retail agribusiness to support the 2 million farmers, 8 million

farm jobs, 100 thousand agribusiness jobs, 1.6 trillion Naira farm-gate produce value and 6 trillion

Naira total value chain productivity value.

Delivering on AgroCola's targets will be driven by the following support elements:

a. Encourage and support youth participation in farming and adoption of best agricultural

practices and production technology to deliver optimal yield quality and quantity

b. Encourage and support youth participation in agribusiness especially retail input, logistics

and aggregation and link to youth farming

c. Encourage and support the use of digital technology to support agronomy and extension

and integrate all areas of the value chain especially input; logistics; production;

aggregation; offtake; financial inclusion and payment

d. Encourage and support the youth directly participating in AgroCola to hire young

uneducated workers to ensure deepening of the impact of the intervention and financial

inclusion

e. Encourage and support the participation of youth in social safety net programmes

especially health insurance and pension

f. Encourage and support the youth in propagating the impact of the ABP using new media

channels to create positive and far reaching perception of the ABP

g. Use assets such as collateral registry and blockchain ledgers to ensure repayment and

traceability of production and transactions

h. Governance will be provided by an independent association reminiscent of the Project

Management Team

5. The Solution: Introducing AgroCola


6. AgroCola Vision

7. Implementation Mechanics

8. Corporate Structure

9. Participant Discovery

10. Production Support

AgroCola is the integrated agricultural production platform for the youth that is built on digital

technology. Young people in Nigeria will be able to own, produce and sell in the agricultural sector

thereby providing a Nigeria with more economic opportunities and financial inclusion for the young

ones.

At inception, AgroCola will be implemented within the provisions of the Anchor Borrowers

Programme.

The operations of AgroCola will be managed by two separate entities: a cooperative and a commercial

entity. The cooperative will support member operations and the commercial entity will support

services provision to the cooperative.

a. Cooperate: An association of youths and other partners interested and participating in

agriculture will be formed, this will bring together young farmers, input suppliers, logistics

providers and aggregators with a focus on retail and last mile engagements. This cooperative

– “The AgroCola Association” will integrate and galvanize the interests of the youth and

present them in a unified position. Members will be able to buy shares in the cooperative and

share in profit of the commercial activities carried out by the cooperative.

b. Commercial entity: A commercial entity- “AgroCola Incorporated” will provide/facilitate all

support elements such as integrated digital platforms, extension and agronomy support,

market discovery, commerce, collective bargaining, payments and agency for the cooperative

and interested individuals in profit oriented commercial arrangements.

The cooperative will have an opportunity to hold equity in the commercial entity so that the youth can

also benefit from the commercial entity.

AgroCola is designed around educated youth that

can drive agricultural effectiveness and efficiency by

adopting global best practices and the exponential

benefits and scale provided by digital technology.

Therefore, participant discovery will be mainly on

digital platforms. A registration portal will be provided

for self-registration that will capture details such as

Know Your Customer (KYC), Bank Verification

Number (BVN), demographic, farm, business,

location and regulatory data. Participant registration

portal has capabilities to validate the authenticity of

provided information while physical verification will

also be layered for additional validation.

AgroCola will deliver and integrate all aspects of production support primarily using digital technology.

The digital technology platform will provide the following in a mostly Do-It-Yourself arrangement:


a. Digitized farmer and farm profile and validation

b. Soil testing and digitized soil profile

c. Computation of individual farm's Economics of Production (EoP) using soil test value, real

disease and pest occurrence

d. Retail input supplier validation

e. Linkage of farmer requirements to input supplier using EoP computation and location

proximity

f. Linkage of supplier's orders to logistics provider and farmer

g. Digitized agronomy, extension, disease and pest diagnostic, remediation and

management, risk management and yield prediction

h. Retail last mile aggregator/off taker validation

i. Produce linkage to off takers using location proximity and technical requirements data

j. Linkage to farm and produce

k. Data collection, analytics, presentation and application

l. Situational reporting

The digital technology platform will support effectiveness and efficiency in agricultural production.

The youths who are digital natives should have little or no problem adopting such a platform as they

are already using them in several other aspects of their lives. It will also attract youth to engage in

agriculture while democratizing access to capital, production support and markets. Finally, digitized

agricultural production will aggregate real end-user generated data; which will support policy makers

in measuring the impact of policy and better targeting of efforts.

AgroCola's Digital Agricultural Platform will utilize technology, digitalized

agriculture practice knowledge and professional extension agents to

deliver farm and farmer management, agricultural extension, agronomy

support, monitoring, evaluation and real-time management

information system on an integrated platform.

The AgroCola digital platform will enable stakeholders in agriculture to

improve verification and validation, increase yield quantity and quality,

reduce agricultural risks, improve cash flow efficiency, improve market

discovery and commercial transactions and improve effectiveness of

efforts in smallholder agriculture and out grower anchor programs.

Beyond production and management information support, the digital

platform – using data and information collected through the integrated

production support, input and produce marketplace will also support

account management, agent banking and tokenized payment that allow

clients to automatically pay and receive payment from their out-grower

farmers, input suppliers and other participants.

11. AgroCola's Digital Agriculture Platform



AgroCola’s digital technology platform will provide support in the following value chain areas:

Table 1: AgroCola’s Digital Agriculture Platform Capability Areas

Area

Farmer

onboarding and

identity

management

Agribusiness

onboarding and

identity

management

Agronomy,

extension,

monitoring and

evaluation

Input and produce

discovery and

marketplace

Business

Management

Capability Areas

Self-farmer and farm registration and onboarding

with multi-level identity management quality and

authenticity verification, integration to 3rd party

systems such as payment providers and financial

institutions

Self and remote agribusiness registration and

onboarding with multi-level business identity

management, quality and authenticity verification,

input and produce cataloguing, inventory

management, integration to 3rd party systems

such as payment providers and financial

institutions

Digitized and calendarized agronomy and

extension body of knowledge to support DIY

agronomy and extension support, disease and

pest management that generates data and

analyses farming practice data for input required

and produce yield prediction

Automated data collection from identity,

agronomy and extension activities and analysis to

support precision input requirement calculation

and distribution through linkage to retail supplier

and logistics provider

AgroCola puts business management tools in the

hands of the participants to enable the tracking of

performance management on financials. Activity

data from their farming or agrobusinesses will

feed into business management and enterprise

resource planning tools to support bookkeeping,

budgeting, cash flow management, profit and loss

and good business practice knowledge. This will

provide optimal business management,

situational awareness and reports to AgroCola

participants and stakeholders on the health and

performance of their enterprises.

Channel and User

Mobile application used

by farmer

Web application used

by validation and

approving authorities

Mobile application and

online/web used by

agribusiness

Web application used

by 3rd party service

providers

Mobile application, web

application, algorithms

and analytics for system

generated information

Mobile and web

application for farmers

and user 3rd party

users. Algorithms and

analytics engine for

system generated

information

Mobile and Web

application for all users

Logistic

Payment

Data analytics and

decisions support

Dashboards and

reporting for

stakeholders

Digitized and automated logistics module that

uses data to link point of input and produce

origination to point of supply, route management,

waybill management and delivery management

Digitized and tokenized payment capable of

supporting automated payments for input,

produce, services and logistics using transaction

data generated through linked value chain

activities with delivery capacity at the last mile

Data driven decision support analytics for policy,

planning and expanded economic activities

Data driven decision support analytics and for

policy, planning and expanded economic activities


application, algorithms

and analytics engine for

system generated

information


application, agents,

algorithms and analytics

engine for system

generated information


application, agents,

algorithms and analytics

engine

Mobile and web

application


12. Small Agribusinesses

13. Offtake Guarantee

AgroCola will support the establishment of about 20 thousand small businesses to provide input

retail, last mile logistics, financial services agency and last mile aggregation to AgroCola participants

and linked engagements in agricultural value chains and the rural economy.

The existing ABP model requires wholesale input distributors to supply to farmers associations

directly. However, in AgroCola, wholesale input distributors will supply to retail input suppliers that will

be linked to farmers in the geographic proximity. Logistics providers will deliver input from retail to

farmer, agent banking will support cash in and cash out while retail aggregation will support last mile

produce aggregation.

AgroCola farmers will serve as anchor customers to these youth owned 3rd party value chain

(businesses) participants that can participate in CBN SME intervention windows.

The educated youth’s participation in farming and agriculture may be the most veritable way to

guarantee produce quality and optimal yield in Nigeria’s agricultural value chains as youth constitute

low barrier to adopting best practices and technology.

This will give supply chain managers at offtake and manufacturing entities the quality assurance

required for their raw material supply chain. Therefore, there is a high likelihood that these

aggregators and manufacturing entities participate and off-take from a youth focused ABP that seeks

to solve multiple socio-economic problems.

The CBN can also support offtake by linking production in a youth focused ABP to offtake entities in

milling and manufacturing areas of its support in its expanded agriculture sector outlook; thereby,

guaranteeing offtake. AgroCola partners will also unlock international markets for produce offtake.

Finally, the youths will be encouraged to participate in small and medium milling and aggregation

enterprises within the "Youths in Agriculture” cooperative.

AgroCola offtake outlook will also leverage the opportunity that is provided by the recently signed

ACFTA for benefits of agricultural exports to Africa through quality produce that is up to international

standard as we work with quality standard partners and take the opportunity of an open Africa.

a. Farming: The financing model will primarily consider farmers in two categories:

I. Farmers with land: EoP for the value chain of participation will be computed and

financed in a 1-year term.

II. Farmers without land: Land lease and clearing will be financed on a 5-year term

with a 1-year payment moratorium

b. Production support agribusinesses (input supplier, logistics, aggregation and

offtake): These participants will be linked to the CBN's SME support fund with

AgroCola's production as the point of entry and guaranteed off-takers for their

business.

6Even though, over 53% of young farmers surveyed have access to land for agriculture purposes or are

currently farming in noncommercial scale, AgroCola will engage deliberate effort with the State

Governments to provide land to interested young farmers. 3 state governments have been

approached with this idea and are each open to provide as much as 100,000 hectares of contiguous

land for such a scheme that encourages youths' engagement in agricultural production.

The states will support AgroCola to identify beneficiaries while AgroCola validates the authenticity of

beneficiaries and also their meeting the criteria for engagement. The states will further provide land to

the beneficiaries on a lease of at least 5 years with the option of outright purchase after the 5-year

lease period.

As in the current ABP models, repayment is guaranteed by off-taker

anchors. However, the youths are tech savvy and can use digital payment

and have an appreciation of credit default, as a result AgroCola aims to

reduce side selling (which is a bane in the current ABP model that has

negative impact on repayment) through the following mechanisms:

a. Inclusion of participants in collateral registry and exclusion of

defaulters from the credit side of financial services

b. Integrated electronic payments usage across AgroCola participants

to track payment and ascertain repayment capacity

c. Decentralized electronic ledger for produce, title and transaction

traceability

14. Financing Model

15. Land…The Role of State Governments

16. Repayment


17. Growth and Sustainability

18. Multiplier Benefits

19. Impact Measurement

For those interested and have shown capacity to grow;

AgroCola is structured for its farmers to start from 1-

hectare production and progressively grow their holding

to 5 hectares per farmer within four years.

7Studies have shown that 95% of youth will grow their

commercial farming effort from 1 hectare to 5 hectares in

4 years if given the opportunity. Where growth will require

additional funding, such funding will be sourced from

commercial banks riding on the available production and

activity data of farmers

which will support commercial banks in making lending decisions.

The AgroCola scheme itself will continue to grow its participation in a revolving financing model as

money repaid by beneficiary will be applied to funding new participants.

Capacity development such as business management and accounting services will be added to the

growth plan of the participants to drive sustainability of the effort beyond CBN intervention.

AgroCola holds the promise of creating multiplier benefits around the implementation of CBN policies

and interventions.

a. SME Intervention: AgroCola will coordinate and integrate with CBN's SME intervention for

funding of the projected 20 thousand small businesses that will support the AgroCola

implementation in retail input, logistics and small mill areas. This will create guaranteed

anchor clients for the SMEs and increase the probability for their success all from a

streamlined and single platform.

b. Financial inclusion: AgroCola will drive financial inclusion by developing a last mile financial

services brand to be called “Cola”. Cola will support an integrated last mile financial services

deployment, especially for agriculture at the smallholder segment in the rural economy.

Financial inclusion around the Cola deployment will include:

I. Agency banking deployment through agents that will originate from AgroCola

farmers. The agents will target efficiently through activity and location data

II. Deepening financial services to over 8 million jobholders that will be created

around the AgroCola deployment

III. Electronic payment will be layered on all interactions between participants in the

AgroCola ecosystem

IV. Improved repayment of credit: Youths understand the stakes and consequences

of default as their identity are captured in collateral registry and access to other

financial services, especially credit may be restricted on default

V. Taxation can be effectively implemented in the AgroCola ecosystem

VI. Consumer finance through prepaid credit for AgroCola participants through a Cola

branded Visa/Verve/Mastercard prepaid card so they can focus on production;

while their needs are met, and financial inclusion deepened


The desired outcomes and picture of success of AgroCola will be determined at 3 levels as follows:

a. Individual participant and output (quantity and quality)

b. Aggregate State participation and value chain output (quantity and quality)

c. Aggregate National participation and value chain output (quality and quality)

The picture of success will cascade down from the national outlook of 2 million farmers, 10,000

agribusinesses, 8 million farm jobs and 16m MT of agricultural produce.

For productivity, measurement will originate from individual participants with periodic assessment of

their practices using data collected on the ADAP technology platform to predict their productivity.

Their productivity prediction will thereafter be validated at harvest for actual production.

Job creation and business measurement will be taken from individual participants on how many farm

hands they hired and their payroll.

Individual measurements will aggregate into state; national and value chain impact and success

measurements, while identify reasons for success or gaps; consolidating on reasons for success; and

implementing corrective measures to fix identified gaps.

AgroCola will provide access to social insurance safety nets for its direct participants and jobholders

through either addition of the premiums and contributions to the EoP or collection from revenue.

The following social insurance benefits will be provided to AgroCola participants at inception:

1. Health/Life Insurance: Health/life insurance to support participants' access to healthcare so

they can remain productive.

2. Pension for AgroCola participants and micro pension for AgroCola jobholders

Social insurance safety nets will help participants focus on agricultural production with the confidence

that their health and future is secure. This will also give the programme additional positive perception

and social capital.

Multi stakeholder engagement is important in a scheme that is potentially as impactful as AgroCola.

There will be multiple stakeholder engagement activities delivered around significant milestones in

the agricultural production calendar and other significant national or religious calendar milestones.

Stakeholder engagement will include

a. Quarterly value chain production stakeholder meetings

b. Quarterly value chain off taker meetings

c. Quarterly agricultural knowledge and research stakeholder meetings

d. Quarterly agriculture finance stakeholder meetings

e. Annual General Meeting and the AgroCola convention: An annual convention of youth in

agriculture that will showcase achievements of youths in Agriculture and headlined by a

musical and cultural concert

f. Users and participants generated on-line repository of data, images, learnings and other

resources in agriculture and general human interest

g. Podcast

20. Social Insurance Safety Net

21. Engagement


h. Contact center to support user enquiries and issue resolution

With AgroCola, farming and agriculture will be cool and prestigious again. AgroCola will engage the

media for publicity on multiple dimensions for the propagation of inspiration, prestige, fulfillment,

aspiration, prosperity, cool and trendy around agriculture to attract the youth. AgroCola' media and

publicity efforts will focus on:

a. Generating interest of all stakeholder categories such as financial institutions, partners,

collaborators and particularly the youth

b. Educating the youth on the opportunities available in agriculture with AgroCola, how to

unlock them and how to engage profitably

c. Generating positive perception of AgroCola and the Nigerian agricultural produce in local,

regional and international markets

AgroCola publicity shall employ multiple platforms and channels with keen focus on high impact short

films, discussions and dialogues presented on social media platforms and experiential engagements.

AgroCola will also receive publicity on the platforms of the local and international partners working

with it in different agricultural categories and dimensions.

The intersection of youth and digital technology holds the promise of unlocking exponential

innovation in several areas of agriculture as seen in tech and youth driven innovative participation in

other sectors of Nigeria's economy such as music, retail, transportation and logistics. Utilizing

AgroCola's aggregate activity, financial and location data will support democratized innovation in

profitably solving problems such as sub optimal yield, post-harvest loss, logistics and financial

exclusion in agriculture and the rural economy.

The AgroCola Digital Agriculture Platform will be open to developers to create further innovative

solutions that can link to the millions of participants on the platform to further deliver increased value,

efficiency and productivity in the supported value chains.

Research and development are crucial in the continuous improvement

of outcomes in both agricultural production and the sociology of the

productive participation of youth in Agriculture. From its extension and

management outlook, AgroCola will develop a network of world class

digital labs located in 5 universities across Nigeria. These labs will be

resourced mainly by young university students to support data based

research – transforming data collected from AgroCola's field

operations into data driven methods of improving youth participation

and better outcomes using digital technology in agronomy, extension,

animal husbandry, storage/post-harvest management, logistics and

micro finance in agricultural value chains.

22. Media and Publicity

23. Innovation

24. Research

25.Knowledge Transfer


One of the most important responsibilities of AgroCola is to

transfer important agricultural, production and management

skills to its young beneficiaries and other participating

stakeholders. AgroCola will pursue knowledge and skills transfer

using digital platforms and mobile e learning capabilities;

electronic and social channels; physical engagement; and

extension contacting channels in the following areas:

a. Agriculture production best practice

b. Farm and agribusiness management

c. Leadership and responsible citizenship

AgroCola's produce will target both local and international markets for maximum economic benefit.

Using digital platforms with efficient and effective digitized reporting, digitized farm management and

its support practices will assure effective quality management and transparency; thereby giving local

and international off takers the confidence to deal in AgroCola produce and the data required to plan

their supply chain effectively.

AgroCola in collaboration with its partners will constitute a quality council that will create and manage

certification criteria and parameters that will be employed and mainstreamed in the AgroCola

production support and Digital Agriculture Platform. This quality certification module will certify

agricultural produce and practices of farmers and other support participants in the AgroCola

ecosystem to international standards.

AgroCola will support the sustainable participation of financial services providers in agriculture. The

profile of the AgroCola participant, combined with integrated digitized production support; real-time

situational awareness and generated prediction data enables financial services to plan, engage,

monitor and recover investments better in agriculture.

AgroCola will create over 2 million new active and productive businesses; corporate customers and

over 8 million active individual customers for banks and other financial institutions in 4 years to 2024.

AgroCola will be bound ethically to act in the best interest of all interacting stakeholder groups and

participants in the scheme. AgroCola's fiduciary responsibility will include guaranteeing and managing

the general well-being and finances of the scheme.

To support its fiducial responsibilities, AgroCola will engage the services of top 4 assurance and

advisory firms to provide support for governance; operating procedures; standards and audits of it

operations in order to foster accountability, transparency and best practice.

The aggregation of extension and agronomy activity; yield; off take; financial services and location data

will be powerful tools in the hands of policy makers; value chain participants and partners to help

know exactly what is happening on farms and other areas of the value chain at all times. This will

further help to develop agriculture in Nigeria and its engagement with global markets.

26. Produce Quality Assurance

27. Agriculture Finance

28. Fiduciary Support

29. Situational Awareness



30. Data Analytics

31. Partnerships

AgroCola will provide powerful data analytics capabilities that will help to convert data to wisdom and

present them in insightful dashboards and reports that will help streamline decision making and

support effective and actionable decisions.

On the users' side, AgroCola's Digital Platform will apply predictive analytics algorithms to data

collected on farming situation to support farmers and other participants to know expected

production and effort required to achieve optimal productivity at all times. This will ultimately motivate

farmers and participant to apply required effort to achieve optimal result as the picture of success is

predictable.

Blockchain technology will help all categories of users to interact with higher levels of transparency

and traceability on activities across the value chain-from land ownership, to soil nutrient composition,

input order fulfillment, crop quality, produce off take fulfillment, payment and warehouse inventory

management.

Partnerships will support AgroCola in several categories for the rapid development and deployment

of capabilities and capacities. AgroCola is in various stages of engagement with partners in required

categories for launch and growth.

Table 2: Proposed Partners and value proposition

Categories

Technology

Agricultural

Value Chain

Partner

AgroMall

Mercy Corp

Microsoft

Syngenta

Engagement

Status

Advanced

Advanced

Advanced

Exploratory

Sub

Categories

Integrated

platforms and

user interfaces

Agronomy Tech

Analytics

Input

Value Proposition

Digital platform for end

to end digitized

information

dissemination, data

collection, analytics and

reporting.

Digitized disease and

pest diagnostics and

management

Data analytics, prediction

and decision support

Input wholesale linkage

to retail and support for

retail input businesses


Financial

Services

Others

Syngenta, OCP

Africa

IITA /

ISO/Syngenta/

aWhere

Dangote

Unity Bank

MasterCard/Visa

Viamo

State

Governments

IITA

Advanced

Advanced

Advanced

Exploratory

Advanced

Advanced

Exploratory

Exploratory

Advanced

Input supply

and distribution

to retail

Produce quality

assurance

Weather and

climate impact

management

Produce off

take

Financial

institutions

Payment

Advocacy

Land

Academic and

research

Support route to market

development for input

supply and integrating

the MSME components

of AgroCola

Set produce quality

standards to match

international quality

standards and assure

and guarantee off takers

of quality

Support weather and

climate based digitized

agronomy advice and

disease prediction

Commitment to off take

produce from the

AgroCola effort

Serve as PFI for AgroCola

participants

Electronic payment

Digital messaging and

stakeholder advocacy

Provision of Land

Validation of digitized

agronomy and extension

practices

Beyond the listed partners, AgroCola holds the potential to aggregate several value adding local and

global partners that identify with a programme that seeks to create economic and social

opportunities and inclusion for the youth and the financially excluded.

32. Governance

33. Implementation

To make the mission of AgroCola a reality-a variant of the ABP that is focused on the youth and the

inclusion of over 10 million young people directly in productive economic engagement, AgroCola

needs a governing entity that is comprised of diverse stakeholders and independent members. This

governing entity is the AgroCola Association, an independent, not-for-profit membership

organization. The association is designed to facilitate the operation of the AgroCola, to coordinate the

agreement among its stakeholders-in their pursuit to promote, develop, and expand the network, and

to manage the delivery of its objectives.

The AgroCola Council- designed after the Project Management Team (PMT) that currently governs

existing ABP projects will be the Association's decision-making organ and it will comprise of one

representative of each stakeholder category: Central Bank of Nigeria; AgroCola Commercial; Youth in

Agriculture; Primary Financial Services Providers; Input Suppliers; Insurance Providers and Off takers.

Together, they will make decisions on the governance of the AgroCola's initiatives and objectives.

Membership of this group may expand to businesses; nonprofit organizations; multilateral

organizations and academic institutions as the AgroCola objectives and reach expands.

All strategic decisions will be brought to the council, and major policy or technical decisions will require

the consent of two-thirds of the votes.

AgroCola is positioned to launch a pilot operation to coincide with dry season farming in 2019. An

implementation plan has been designed with consideration for partner participation, geographic

implementation, value chain participation and ecosystem play. AgroCola's topline implementation

plan is as follows:


Table 3 AgroCola’s Implementation Outlook

Area

Concept

development

Partnerships

Date

Aug. 2019

Aug. 2019

Status

Ongoing

Ongoing

Activity

Development of

white paper and

adoption by CBN

and other

stakeholders

Partner

engagement and

commitment

Output

Workable concept with high

level implementation plan

and adoption by key

stakeholders

Aggregation and

commitment of key delivery

partners


Blueprint

Media

Pilot

Rolling

Implementation

Year 1

Rolling

Implementation

Year 2

Aug. 2019

Sept. 2019

Oct. 2019

Jan. 2020

Jan. 2020

Jan. 2021

Ongoing

Ongoing

Planning

Planning

Planning

Development of

implementation

blueprint

Development of

media plan and

collaterals

Run AgroCola pilot

and collate key

learnings for scale-

up implementation

Drive the delivery

of AgroCola’s

picture of success

across value

chains and value

chain elements

Drive delivery of

AgroMall export

led outlook

Drive the delivery

of AgroCola’s

picture of success

across value

chains and value

chain elements

Real life implementation

plan and measurement

tools

Advertisement, Social

Media engagement

platforms

Pilot with 50 thousand

young farmers in 5 states

and 5 value chains spread

across 5 geo-political

zones. Creating an

estimated 200 thousand

farm jobs and 250

agribusiness owners and

producing 300 thousand

MT of produce and

livestock

Measure results and

publish pilot outcomes

Reach 500 thousand

farmers across 36 states

and the FCT in 5 value

chains.

Creating an estimated 2

million farm jobs, 2,500

agribusinesses owners and

producing 3 million MT of

crops and livestock.

Measure results and

publish outcomes and

report

Create export led strategy

and commence pilot export

of AgroCola produce

Reach 1 million farmers

across 36 states and the

FCT in 10 value chains.




Rolling

Implementation

Year 3

Rolling

Implementation

Year 4

Jan 2021

Jan. 2022

Jan 2022

Jan. 2023

Jan 2023

Planning

Planning

Drive delivery of

AgroMall export

led outlook

Drive the delivery

of AgroCola’s

picture of success

across value

chains and value

chain elements

Drive delivery of

AgroMall export

led outlook

Drive the delivery

of AgroCola’s

picture of success

across value

chains and value

chain elements

Drive delivery of

AgroMall export

led outlook



crop and livestock.

Measure results and


report

Review export led strategy

and consolidate export of

AgroCola produce

Reach 1.5 million farmers


FCT in 12 value chains





crop and livestock.

Measure results and


report.

Create cash crop strategy.

Commence export of

AgroCola cash crops

produce

Reach 2 million farmers


FCT in 12 value chains

Creating 8 million farm

jobs, 10,00 agribusinesses

owners and producing 16

million MT of crop and

livestock.

Measure results and


results

Drive cash crop strategy.

Commence export of

AgroCola cash crops

produce

34. Operations Model

AgroCola seeks to engage over 2 million youth and 8 million farm jobs in several areas of agricultural

value chains in Nigeria. Distribution of participants will spread across all states with consideration for

socio-economic and demographic elements such as population, agricultural production, value chain,

competitive advantage etc. Operations will be organized along clear operational structures that

combines governance, technology and physical operations in a loop of management interactions as

follows:

Table 4: AgroCola's Operations model


Area

Governance

Management

Technology

Last mile

delivery

Frequency

Quarterly

meetings

Daily

Daily

Daily

Output

Strategy, plan,

risk

management

and

performance

review.

Strategy

implementati

on and

performance

management.

Always up

technology

infrastructure

to support

AgroCola

Effective and

efficient

operational

deployment

Constituent

AgroCola

Association

Council; CBN;

Partners

AgroCola

Corporate

Management;

Youth in

Agriculture

Cooperative

Management

AgroCola

technology

department;

technology service

providers

National; state and

local government

delivery structure

Activities

To drive forward the

strategic direction of

AgroCola as a whole, setting

corporate and business

priorities, ensuring

performance, managing risk

and accountability

Will drive planning,

organizing, staffing, leading

and controlling the activities

of the corporate

responsibilities of AgroCola

and the Young Farmers

Association

Will support an integrated

digital platform for farmer

onboarding, agricultural

production support, input

and produce discovery,

sales and payment,

logistics, quality control and

risk management

Support field validation

operations of farmer

onboarding; extension;

agronomy; monitoring and

evaluation; input delivery

and produce off take.

Support front-end user

operations and back-end

enterprise operations

35. What's Next for AgroCola

We are publishing this document outlining our goals for AgroCola and launching acrocola.com as a

home for the association and all things AgroCola. It will continue to be updated over the coming

months.

a. The AgroCola's Digital Agriculture Platform:

Over the coming months, the AgroCola will work with the community to gather feedback on a

prototype and bring it to a production-ready state. In particular, this work will focus on ensuring the

security, performance, and scalability of the platform and implementation.

I. AgroCola will perform extensive testing of the platform, which range from tests of the

protocol to constructing a full-scale test of the network in collaboration with entities

such as input providers, financial services, payment services and off takers to ensure

the system is working before launch.

II. Together with its community of users, AgroCola will research the technological

challenges on the path to implementing the ecosystem so that we can meet the

objective we have set for the next four years.

b. The AgroCola Association (PMT):

i. We will work to grow the AgroCola partnership to around 200 partners and geographically

distributed and diverse members, all serving as anchor delivery partners on AgroCola and

ADAP

ii. The association will develop and adopt a comprehensive charter and set of bylaws for the

association on the basis of the currently proposed governance structure

iii. We will recruit talents for AgroCola to support its rapid implementation

iv. We will identify social impact partners aligned with our joint mission and will work with them to

establish a social impact program.


36. How to Get Involved

37. Conclusion

AgroCola envisions a vibrant ecosystem of youths engaging and innovating in agricultural production

and agribusiness services to spur the growth and development of modern agriculture in Nigeria. Our

success will be defined as enabling any young person interested in agricultural production or

agribusiness in Nigeria to have the opportunity and access to finance, production support and

markets.

For example, we will consider ourselves successful when the average 25-year-old person can start a

farm or an input retail business, has a fast and simple way to get funds to set up, and also a simple and

fast way to sell their product.

AgroCola is setting in motion a revolutionary mission and we are asking the stakeholders to help. If you

believe in what AgroCola could do for millions of young people in Nigeria, please join in. Your feedback

is needed to make sure economic opportunity, food security and financial inclusion are realities for

young people everywhere in Nigeria.

AgroCola will work with the stakeholder community in the coming months and continue to partner

with the Central Bank of Nigeria and other policy makers to further the mission.

The goal of AgroCola is an integrated agricultural finance; production support and marketplace

deployment built on a secure and stable digital technology platform; designed to support the youths'

economic productive participation in agriculture and agribusiness; and governed by an independent

association.

Our hope is to create better access to cheaper and easier funding; agricultural production support;

financial service and global markets for Nigeria's youth led agriculture. We know that delivering this will

be challenging and we cannot do it alone-it will take collaboration and galvanizing efforts for this

intervention.

We hope you'll join us and help turn this dream into a reality for millions of young people in Nigeria.

1World Bank Group2African Development Bank3 AgroMall primary research on youth engagement in Agriculture in Nigeria 4Agromall primary data on ABP5AgroMall primary research on youth engagement in Agriculture in Nigeria6 AgroMall primary research on youth engagement in Agriculture in Nigeria7 AgroMall primary research on youth engagement in Agriculture in Nigeria


Youth . Scalable . Sustainable

The Future ofAgriculture

8, Lasode crescent Victoria Island,

Lagos Nigeria | 0129390268

www.agrocola.com | [email protected]

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