His farm, which is situated in Nasarawa state in northern Nigeria, currently sits on 45,000 hectares and employs more than 600 indigenes of Nasarawa. Forbes Africa recently interviewed Rotimi to find out more about his vision.
He attended King’s College in Lagos and proceeded to obtain his first degree at University of Aberdeen where he graduated with a degree in Economics. He also obtained a Master’s Degree in Economics from the same institution. He further enrolled for yet another Master’s Degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London where he gained an MSc. in Finance and Development Studies. Upon graduation, he landed a role as an analyst at the European Economics and Financial Centre in London. Afterwards, Euromoney Magazine- employed me where he covered the African space.
While at Euromoney, he had the opportunity to travel around a few African countries, which exposed him to countries like Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, South Africa, Zambia and Ghana. A common thread amongst these nations, he noticed was agriculture. Agriculture is at the very core of these countries and this got him thinking. After a few more trips, he decided to move back to Nigeria and sink his teeth into the agricultural space.
He said: “Upon his arrival back in Nigeria, I got a job at a premier Bank where I was promised to sit on the agriculture desk – my hope was that I would gain enough knowledge of the Nigerian agricultural industry and develop myself from there.”
Unfortunately, the agricultural desk at the Bank never quite achieved its set goals. He pushed hard for the Bank to adopt policies and gain inroads into the agricultural industry but my attempts were somewhat frustrated. I sincerely feel that the bank wasn’t quite ready to launch fully into the agricultural space.
“As my frustration grew, I decided to quit banking and planned to go it alone into agriculture. Frankly, my decision led to a challenging sojourn as attempts to raise funding with my partner proved difficult. We started a Structured Trade and Commodity Finance company. After a while I started consulting for small agriculture companies seeking to raise capital both locally and internationally.”
So what did he do? READ more on Forbes.com
