| Commodities |    1555 VIEWS  |
| Commodities | |
| 1555 VIEWS | |
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Wednesday, December 29, 2021 / 03:02 PM / Kainosedge Consulting for AFEX Commodities Exchange
When we began
curating highlights for the 2021 Year in Review, we were in awe of what a year
we have had; one filled with huge milestones, immense growth, and definitely a
lot of lessons. Thankfully, all Xperts and our many friends and collaborators
showed up to get us through the toughest days and deliver on our ever-crazy
vision of feeding Africa.
In
retrospect, 2021 was another record-breaking year for us at AFEX. We took several
leaps into the depths of innovation, expanded our presence and service
offerings into new territories, formed new partnerships, and developed both
processes and technology to carry us into the future. Join us as we take a ride
into the unforgettable AFEX moments of 2021.
We started the year with a "new direction"
In 2021, we
doubled down on our strategy to contribute to Africa's commodities market by
deploying solutions in trading, financing, and market system development. This
naturally led to the unveiling of our three business entities - AFEX Fair
Trade, AFEX Commodities Exchange, and AFEX Investment.
We released
our 5-year impact report early on in
the year; providing a big picture view of our impact over the first five years
of doing business in Nigeria. It was a perfect launchpad for a year in which we
managed to scale our impact substantially, while laying the structures for the
next five years of our journey.
Within the
year, our operations touched 105 rural communities as we reached over 270,000
farmers and facilitated over 580,000 MT in trade volumes. Our strides in
the physical markets were matched by strides in the financial markets as we
announced launch of the first-ever Warehouse Receipt Backed Commercial
paper in Africa among other innovations. Our
commodities trading platform, ComX, hit over 30,000 users and we launched over 20 reports on the
commodities market over the course of the year.
Great partnerships and engagements
A number of
important partnerships happened in 2021, starting with our partnership with the
Osun State Government and the Central Bank of Nigeria to flag-off the cocoa production season in Osun
State. Our goals of providing quality inputs was
also strengthened with the collaboration with the African Fertilizer and
Agribusiness Partnership (AFAP) to boost fertilizer production,
availability, and accessibility for smallholders.
At the deal
room of the 2021 Feed Nigeria Summit, we signed an MoU with the South-West Agriculture
Company (SWAgCo) and the Ogun State Government for the
development of five thousand hectares (5000 ha.) for the production of
multi-crops in the South-West region of Nigeria. Our MoU with the Flour Milling Association of
Nigeria (FMAN) on the sidelines of the Brown Revolution
Initiative was also a key partnership with the potential to boost
sustainable production, processing, supply, and marketing of wheat produced in
Nigeria.
Knowledge sharing and looking ahead
As industries
and nations continue to contend with and recover from the impact of the
pandemic, we continued sharing knowledge both online and offline, with the goal
of providing data and insights that can help with decision-making on Nigeria's
commodities market. We successfully launched the AFEX Commodities Market
Update, a weekly program showing live on Channels Television that summarizes
activities in the market and on the Exchange. We also held over 20 webinars
that provided deep dives on various aspects of the commodities market. One
of our favorite engagements was the panel at the AGRF 2021 summit to discuss
digital financial services for agriculture.
As we say
goodbye to 2021, we extend a big thank you to all our investors, partners,
stakeholders, and Xperts for another year to remember. 2021 commemorates months
of resilience, teamwork, and dedication. We also say cheers ahead to
an incredible 2022, and hope that you will keep watching and supporting
us. We promise that it will be a ton of fun and a lot of impact.
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