Bazuze trading platform connects Nigeria farmers to ready local and export markets

To talk about the importance of agriculture is not overemphasizing, especially with a population of over 200 million Nigerians to feed daily.

The problems of Agriculture in Nigeria is incomplete if we don’t talk about this value chain, agricultural marketing, which is the reason smallholder farmers are running at loss due to force sales, leading to high rate of poverty, over 40% postharvest loss as a result of poor access to diverse market, inadequate storage facilities, ineffective access to credits and long chain of middlemen.

Can we ensure food security this way? Afraid not, thus the need to boost agriculture through agricultural product export, as a means to make a significant profit and a good yield on investment. The dividends of agricultural practices lie in the trading the farm commodities of these smallholder farmers.

This is why we created Bazuze, an Agricultural Commodity Trading partnership platform that is creating ready access to the diverse market for smallholder farmers by trading their harvested farm produce in the local and export to the global market.

Bazuze allows for individuals interested in agribusiness but does not have the time, expertise or full resources to run trade or export farm produce to be a stakeholder in the agriculture commodity trading through a collaborative sponsorship effort. Our partners sponsor the trading of a commodity from the farm gate until the end of the trade.

Each commodity to trade is insured by the Leadway Assurance. Bazuze’s team provides the fund and expertise needed in partnership with farmers thus eliminating the long chain of middlemen and taking the farm produce directly to the diverse markets.

During the discussion with Tunji Olalekan, the Co-Founder of Bazuze, he said “Nigeria consumes annually 1.7 Million tonnes of Milk but produces 600,000 tonnes, it’s time to take the bull by the horn, let us grow Naira by tapping into 10 billion USD that the country is losing in annual export due to these postharvest losses and decline in production. Exportation is no longer a big man business, it is our business. Nigerians are neither lazy nor a fraudster”

Bazuze was soft-launched earlier this year where the team has been able to secure partnerships with processing companies and some international wholesalers and the goal is to:-

Empower smallholder farmers to increase.

Reduce postharvest food wastage and increase food production to ensure food security.

Provide opportunities for entrepreneurs to earn from the exporting business.

Create employment opportunities.