Farmcrowdy Group, owners of Nigeria’s first digital agriculture platform Farmcrowdy and the newly launched Farmgate Africa, a leading online agro-commodity aggregator, have today announced a strategic partnership with Best Foods Livestock and Poultry Limited one of Nigeria’smost respected agribusiness companies with more than 16 years of operations and a focus on the processing and marketing of livestock produce.
Under the agreement, Farmcrowdy Group and its subsidiaries will consolidate their financial, technology, sales and marketing resources to increase the go-to-market efforts of Best Foods with Farmgate Africa. The partnership will also work towards specifically improving the livestock value chain across the nation through Farmcrowdy’s production. This will improve the quality of meat production and processing practices in alignment with international standards, becoming the best source of processed meat in Nigeria, eventually eliminating the need for the importation of processed meat.
Mr. Emmanuel Ijewere, the Chairman of Best Foods Group and also the Vice-President of the Nigerian Agricultural Business Group (NABG) says, “according to state records, Lagos state alone consumes over 6,000 cows daily. This partnership with Farmcrowdy Group will create easy access to funds that will be used to establish the best meat processing practices utilized around the globe. This will eventually lead to Best Foods expanding beyond the meat industry as both companies have synergy in other areas that will be good for Nigeria’s overall agricultural space.”
Onyeka Akumah, Group CEO and Founder of Farmcrowdy Group (FCG), says “We are going into this relationship with Best Foods for the long haul, to improve how Nigerians access quality beef. This relationship will see all partners work together to raise quality cattle, process and sell quality beef to major buyers around the country. We are therefore excited that we have a respected expert like Mr Ijewere offering his years of experience, network, and assets to improve our process while we look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship for many years to come.”
Kenneth Obiajulu, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Farmgate Africa, also spoke about the importance of the partnership for his business stating that it will enable Farmgate to meet widening demand from a host of strategic key accounts, including modern retail facilities, restaurants, international hotel chains, schools and caterers, for healthy and traceable meat. “This is tremendous traction for Farmgate Africa. The increasing daily demand for meat in Lagos is encouraging and a pointer to growth. Part of our mandate is to reduce the spread of animal-to-human diseases by providing affordable, traceable, fit-for-slaughter and disease-free bulls coming directly from Farmcrowdy Group’s feedlots across the country”.
