PULA Advisors to Participate in 2022 FNS Deal Room Framework
The Organising Committee of the Feed Nigeria Summit (FNS) and its Deal Brokerage Room Process, has announced participation of PULA Advisors in its 2022 partnership framework. The Committee disclosed this in a statement released in Lagos. PULA Advisors is an agricultural insurance and technology company that designs and delivers innovative agricultural insurance and digital products to help smallholder farmers endure yield risks, improve farming practices, and bolster incomes over time. The development comes after calls by agro experts for the de-risking of agricultural investments to build resilience and increase credit providers’ appetite for lending to farmers by offering safety nets. Recall that the Feed Nigeria Summit Deal Brokerage Room Platform was birthed in 2020 to rally top-tier investment capital needed to support agribusinesses at critical points in their life cycle, thereby providing the required thrust for the agricultural sector to better impact the overall Nigerian economy. “We consider the FNS Deal Room to be a well thought-out framework for delivering critical investment support to existing and qualified agribusinesses to take their productive operations to scale” says Anthony Chukwuma, who handles PULA’s West African Regional business. entrenched through the Deal Brokerage Room in line with the FNS proceedings. In 2021, the FNS Deal Room Secretariat secured partnerships with key entities including the Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development (FMARD), the African Development Bank (AfDB), International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), UK Department for International Trade (UK DIT), and the USAID Feed the Future Cohorts, as well as Access Bank Plc. It also sports major agribusiness entities like AFEX Commodities Exchange, AA Universal Ltd, among others.
According to Richard-Mark Mbaram, former Technical Adviser to the Nigerian Minister of Agriculture on Knowledge Management & Communication, “the underlying imperative for evolving these partnerships is to foster a prosperity-oriented synergy between government, agribusinesses, development partner institutions and prospecting investors”. Mbaram – who has transitioned to a new role as Lead, Strategic Delivery Team of the Special Agro-Industrial Processing Zones (SAPZ) Program – was quick to point out that the Brokerage Room at the FNS2021 recorded impressive deals, among which was a $50m USD transaction partnership between Messrs. AFEX Commodities Exchange and AA Universal Limited, and that the framework continued to process deal prospects through the year.
For Dr. Debisi Araba, Chief Advisor to the FNS Deal Room Process, “the onboarding of an insurance stakeholder, at this time, arms the Platform with capacity to address the need for associated investment risk mitigation in the agricultural sector”. Drawing from this, it means that both foreign and local investors can rest assured that there is cover against unforeseen adverse occurrences. The outcome of a 2020 Research revealed that nearly 80% of Nigerian farmers were affected by either floods or drought, leading to loss of investments and bad debt. This speaks to the overarching need for virile, dependable, insurance products in the Nigerian agribusiness ecosystem. “Knowing what PULA Advisors have achieved in the insurance space across the African continent, their sign-up to the FNS2022 Deal Room framework is a major milestone in the investment de-risking quest of Nigerian agribusiness”, adds Araba.
Agro Nigeria
