Why Nigeria's smallholders remain stuck: Seeds, credit, and missing data (opens in new tab)

Despite contributing nearly a quarter of GDP and employing half the workforce, Nigeria's agricultural sector is trapped in low productivity by mutually reinforcing barriers: dysfunctional seed systems, credit market exclusion, absent farmer registries, and federal–state coordination failures. Closing these gaps requires not piecemeal programmes but systemic investment in identification infrastructure, pluralistic seed supply, and risk-sharing mechanisms capable of reaching the most constraine...