Securing Nigeria’s food supply
In 2010, Nigerian social entrepreneur Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu won a Rolex Award for Enterprise for creating a radio station to advise smallholder farmers. Now, his latest project, a network of solar-powered, walk-in cold rooms, is revolutionizing Nigeria’s food supply chain.
Twenty years ago, Nnaemeka Ikegwuonu established a radio station, Smallholder Farmer Rural Radio, to help farmers in Nigeria better manage and harvest their crops. In a country where 70 per cent of the population live on subsistence agriculture, and literacy levels are low, the station has been a phenomenal success. Ikegwuonu estimates that today it broadcasts to more than 15 million people, and two-thirds of listeners have increased their agricultural yield by 50 per cent and their household income by 45 per cent.
