Nigeria’s large share of smallholder farms deal with a host of problems, including poor infrastructure, low technology adoption, and soil imbalance. CNN’s Marketplace Africa meets Rural Farmers Hub, a coalition of experts in the agricultural industry, who are leveraging AI, GPS coordinates and satellite to empower farmers to address these issues and improve crop production. CNN’s Zain Asher speaks with one of Nigeria’s largest cocoa players, Sunbeth Global Concepts as they are diversifying into supply chain expansion in hopes of driving growth for the Nigerian grown crop.

For an increasing number of farmers across the world, maintaining healthy soil is a challenge as demands for agriculture continue to grow. Nanshal Silas, Operations Manager at Rural Farmers Hub, explains that this is due to a gap in knowledge, “Most times, farmers have very big challenge. And this challenge is not far from their inability to understand what is happening in the soil. First of all, for a farmer to grow crop and to maximize profit, he or she must have in-depth knowledge.”

Agri-tech company, Rural Farmers Hub was established in 2018 with the aim to provide smallholder farmers with data-driven insight into soil testing. Aishatu Shuaibu, Extensionist at Rural Farmers Hub, explains to CNN how the company work, “I get to search for local farmers within communities. Then I take their soil coordinates. After taking the soil coordinates to know what they need in their soils, I guide them on what to apply, the fertilizer that is needed and the major procedure that is supposed to be taken for them to have bountiful harvest.”

Rural Farmers Hub’s ‘chief app’ takes coordinates and uses satellite imagery and AI to analyse soil quality and recommend fertilizer proportions to resolve issues. While Silas says 31,000 farmers across 12 states in Nigeria have bought in, experts say challenges remain. According to Dr Andrew Iloh, Agricultural Biotechnologist at Sheda Science & Technology Complex, FCT, “One of the biggest challenges for every kind of technology is adaptation […]. Not just bringing, the technology, but every other thing needs to work hand in hand so that agricultural productivity in Nigeria can be improved.”

CNN’s Zain Asher has an in-depth conversation with Olasunkanmi Owoyemi, the CEO of Sunbeth Global Concepts about the company’s growth and the positive impact this will have for Nigeria’s farming. For Owoyemi, the major challenge of operating in Nigeria’s agricultural sector is “Getting people to move back to the productive sector […]. For us as a business, our vision is to empower the origin producers of food ingredients, products with the financing structure, logistics, markets, and education and technology, it’s a massive challenge and needs massive scale of financing, massive scale of research, technology. This challenge being resolved alone can turn us easily from just producing to processing, consuming, and exporting the refined products and to enable intra-African trades to be a model for the world.”

Owoyemi tells Asher about the importance of investing in future talent, “The Sunbeth Excellence Partnership programme we use to reward and celebrate the best graduating students in the local universities in Nigeria, which involves cash gift and we integrate them into our system and take them to put them into expose them globally by taking them into courses, like executive programmes in one of the best universities in the world to let them understand it.”

Owoyemi ends by delving into his company’s growth in the last year, “Last year we did around 52,000 tonnes of cocoa export out of Nigeria. And I mean that I remember when I started this business. When I bought 200 tonnes, I felt as though we are doing something great, but within eight years doing 50,000 tonnes in over 50,000 tonnes in cocoa alone showed how much we’ve grown, how much people we’ve brought in, how much people have been able to contribute to our progress.”

These interviews were featured on the latest episode of Marketplace Africa on CNN International.

https://edition.cnn.com/business/marketplace-africa

Marketplace Africa airs on CNN International at the following times:

Friday 6th March 2026 at 18:45 WAT
Saturday 7th March 2026 at 18:45 WAT
Sunday 8th March 2026 at 05:45 WAT and 10:45 WAT
Monday 9th March 2026 at 05:45 WAT

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