KEY POINTS

• Bank of Industry and the Raw Materials Research and Development Council have signed a memorandum of understanding to develop Nigeria’s agricultural value chain.
• BOI managing director Olasupo Olusi says the deal will channel financing to agro-processors that turn local raw materials into finished and semi-finished goods.
• RMRDC director general Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso says the partnership targets value exchange, process technologies, industrialization and jobs.

Olasupo Olusi’s Bank of Industry is putting financing muscle behind a broader push to turn raw materials into finished goods. The state-owned lender has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Raw Materials Research and Development Council to deepen the country’s agricultural value chain and lift its contribution to gross domestic product.

The agreement follows months of engagements between the two institutions. It covers the full arc of value addition, from harvesting, seedlings, cultivation, storage and processing to packaging, logistics and marketing. In particular, it takes aim at post-harvest losses that have historically dragged on Nigerian farmers and eaten into their margins.

Agro-processing sits at the center of the arrangement, though both sides also flagged solid minerals and industrial inputs as areas where BOI financing can back research-ready projects.

Olusi pitches his financing pipeline

At the signing, Olusi, the managing director and chief executive of the Bank of Industry, framed the MoU as a fit between complementary strengths. Furthermore, the council brings research and development depth on raw materials. BOI brings the capacity to turn viable projects into executable industrial deals the bank can finance. Together, he argued, the two can do what neither could do as effectively on its own.

“Nigeria’s raw materials should not be leaving our shores as commodities. They should be leaving as products,” Olusi said, telling the room the bank is ready to co-identify opportunities, structure financing and back entrepreneurs who can process local resources into finished or semi-finished goods.

He furter pitched the partnership as something Nigerians will feel in the factories that open, the jobs that follow and the value that stays at home rather than slipping abroad as raw commodities.

RMRDC eyes industrialization

Nnanyelugo Martin Ike-Muonso, director general and chief executive of the Raw Materials Research and Development Council, said the council welcomed the formalization and that the two institutions are uniting around value exchange development and the advancement of process technologies.

“These elements serve as the foundation for industrialisation, the creation of prosperity, and the generation of employment, along with all the indicators that guarantee that people live the kind of lives that they deserve,” he also said.

The MoU arrives at a moment when Nigeria has been pushing harder to diversify revenue away from oil, with agro-processing and local beneficiation taking center stage in federal industrial policy. Whether the partnership delivers beyond the signing room will depend on how quickly BOI and RMRDC can move from framework to projects on the ground.