Agriculture Doesn't Have a Technology Problem. It Has a Coordination Problem.

An edition of Nectrr Industry Spotlight hosted by Pelumi Oluwaseun, exploring the ideas behind the people and the prroducts shaping Africa's future.

"There is no structure within agriculture."

It was one of the first statements Ayoade Habibullah made during our conversation. By the end of the discussion, it had become the thread connecting every challenge facing African agriculture.

From financing and logistics to education, technology, and market access, every issue pointed back to one reality.

Agriculture is fragmented.

At Nectrr, we believe every meaningful prroduct begins with a problem worth solving. Sometimes that problem is obvious. Other times, it is buried beneath layers of disconnected systems, outdated processes, and overlooked people. Agriculture happens to be one of those industries where solving a single problem is never enough.

That is why we brought together two people approaching the same challenge from different directions.

Deborah Olayiwola, an Agribusiness Consultant, Trainer, and Greenhouse Expert, has spent years equipping people with the practical skills needed to thrive in agriculture.

Ayoade Habibullah, CEO of Hashmar Farms, is building technology to connect the fragmented systems that prevent agriculture from reaching its full potential.

One builds people.

The other builds products designed to connect an entire ecosystem.

Together, they revealed something bigger than either perspective alone.

Agriculture does not need another app.

It needs better coordination.

Agriculture is bigger than the farm

When asked what inspired him to build Hashmar Farms, Ayoade did not begin by talking about technology.

He talked about structure.

Or rather, the lack of it.

Farmers operate separately from financiers. Input suppliers are disconnected from processors. Logistics providers work independently of storage facilities. Valuable agricultural data is scattered, making financing, insurance, and planning far more difficult than they should be.

Every player is solving their own problem.

Very few are solving the industry's problem.

That fragmentation has consequences.

A farmer can increase production, but without access to quality inputs, storage, transportation, financing, insurance, and reliable buyers, higher yields rarely translate into higher incomes.

The challenge is not simply producing more food.

The challenge is building systems where every participant can work together.

The value chain most people never see

Deborah believes one of agriculture's greatest misconceptions is that farming is the entire industry.

It is not.

Agriculture is an ecosystem made up of production, logistics, processing, storage, regulation, quality assurance, input supply, administration, training, research, and many other specialised fields.

Understanding that ecosystem changes everything.

Rather than encouraging young people to become experts in every area, she encourages them to first understand how the value chain works before identifying where their strengths fit best.

That clarity creates specialists instead of generalists.

And specialists build stronger industries.

Why building agritech is different

Technology has transformed banking, commerce, education, and entertainment.

Naturally, many assume agriculture simply needs another digital solution.

The reality is far more complex.

According to Ayoade, building for agriculture is fundamentally different from building for almost any other industry.

Many smallholder farmers live in communities where internet connectivity is inconsistent, electricity is unreliable, and digital literacy varies significantly.

Designing an application is therefore only the beginning.

The real work starts after launch.

Teams must visit communities, organise demonstrations, train farmers, answer questions, and build trust before expecting adoption.

Customer acquisition becomes physical rather than purely digital.

Product design becomes community building.

Execution becomes more important than innovation itself.

Perhaps that is why agriculture reminds us that the best prroducts are not necessarily the most sophisticated.

They are the ones built around the realities of the people they serve.

Education is infrastructure too

Technology cannot solve problems that people have never been prepared to solve.

Deborah reflected on her own experience studying agriculture and admitted something surprising.

She did not truly enjoy agriculture until her final year project, when she managed a practical rabbit production system.

That experience changed everything.

Agriculture stopped being theory.

It became tangible.

Today, she believes Nigeria's biggest educational gap is not a lack of agricultural programmes.

It is a lack of practical exposure.

Too many graduates leave university understanding agriculture academically without ever experiencing it professionally.

Yet whenever she trains young people through practical work, the transformation is remarkable.

Students who initially resist physical labour become enthusiastic once they begin constructing greenhouses, handling equipment, and seeing visible results.

The problem is rarely young people.

The problem is how agriculture is introduced to them.

Data may become agriculture's most valuable asset

The conversation naturally moved to financing.

For many farmers, access to capital determines everything else.

Without funding, quality seeds remain unaffordable.

Modern equipment becomes inaccessible.

Productivity remains low.

Banks, however, continue to view agriculture as a high risk industry because reliable data is often unavailable.

Hashmar Farms wants to change that.

Their vision is to create digital identities for farmers by capturing farm boundaries, soil information, productivity records, and historical performance over time.

That data can help banks make more informed lending decisions.

It can help insurers assess risk more accurately.

Most importantly, it gives farmers an opportunity to build credibility without relying solely on land as collateral.

In agriculture, trust may become the most valuable currency of all.

Solving logistics means solving access

Few issues illustrate fragmentation more clearly than logistics.

Deborah imagined a platform that allows farmers to request transportation with transparent pricing based on distance and tonnage.

Simple.

Accessible.

Efficient.

Ayoade approached the same challenge from another direction.

Most smallholder farmers harvest relatively small quantities.

Transporting those quantities individually is too expensive, forcing farmers to sell to middlemen who aggregate produce before delivering it to processors.

Rather than removing middlemen altogether, he believes technology should strengthen farmer clusters, create local aggregation centres, and reduce transportation costs through collaboration.

Different approaches.

One destination.

Giving farmers greater access to markets.

The future belongs to connected ecosystems

Perhaps the most valuable lesson from this conversation is that agriculture cannot be transformed by technology alone.

Nor can it be transformed by education alone.

Or finance.

Or logistics.

Every solution depends on another.

Better farmers require better training.

Better financing depends on better data.

Better logistics rely on stronger infrastructure.

Better outcomes require stronger collaboration.

Agriculture is not waiting for one revolutionary idea.

It is waiting for disconnected systems to finally work together.

That is what makes building for agriculture both incredibly difficult and incredibly meaningful.

It is also what makes conversations like this important.

At Nectrr, we believe understanding industries means going beyond headlines and exploring the people, ideas, and prroducts shaping them from the inside.

A huge thank you to Deborah Olayiwola and Ayoade Habibullah for sharing their insights and experiences with us.

The future of African agriculture will not be built by technology alone.

It will be built by people bold enough to connect everything technology cannot.

What do you think is the biggest challenge facing African agriculture today?