British International Investment , the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor, have announced a $26.5 million commitment to AFEX Commodities Exchange to help it address food security in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.
The investment will support structural improvements in Africa’s agricultural industry, which will significantly benefit smallholder farmers and lead to improvements in food security. The additional warehouses will provide 230,000 metric tones of storage capacity, enabling up to 200,000 more farmers to access low-cost storage and maximise sales from crop harvests, potentially helping increase farmer incomes by more than 200 per cent.
Speaking at the signing ceremony in Lagos, BII Chief Executive Officer, Nick O’Donohoe said, ”The World Bank estimates that Africa’s food import bill has reached c.US$30 billion in recent decades. This is why we need to back technology-driven companies like AFEX because they help reduce that import cost by supporting smallholder farmers to increase local food production, while also boosting their incomes’’.