Why Nigerian Farmers Remain Poor: The Value Chain Trap

Farmers who plant, tend, and harvest crops take on the highest risk but earn the smallest share of the final price. A cocoa grower in Côte d’Ivoire once sold beans without knowing they became luxury chocolate. His lack of information kept him at the bottom of the chain — a gap some call the "tax of ignorance." In Nigeria the pattern repeats. Smallholders sell raw produce to middlemen with storage, processing, and export networks. Paid in Naira and unaware of global prices, farmers miss out on profit from processing, branding, and distribution. Short-term survival mindsets and feast-or-famine cycles make reinvestment in equipment or marketing hard. Farmers stay poor not from laziness but because the system is built to extract value from them, not for them. Watch the accompanying video and share your thoughts on how we can change this reality.

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