The Land API

Hey, Hannatu here 👋

In March,  Nigerian megafarm Olam Agri got $100 million from FMO. 

The goal? Pay for rice imports from India, Thailand, and Vietnam into African markets.

This number stands out.

Because very few indigenous African agribusinesses have raised this kind of money. 

In 2025, only five agribusiness deals in Africa crossed $10 million.

In the past decade, just two African agtech companies, Twiga and Wasoko, have raised over $100 million.

But Olam isn't the typical African company.

The company was founded in Nigeria in 1989 by Indian-born entrepreneur Sunny Verghese. 

Today, it's headquartered in Singapore and operates across 60 countries. 

In Nigeria alone, Olam controls thousands of hectares of farmland across the North-Central and North-West regions. 

They grow rice, run flour mills, and distribute food staples throughout the country.

All of this: the farming, the processing, the distribution, used to be done by smallholder farmers. 

Now one mega-farm does it all. 

And it just secured another $100 million to import rice from Asia while operating large rice estates in Nigeria.

A megafarm is what happens when thousands of smallholder operations get consolidated into one corporate-controlled system.

Instead of hundreds of farmers each owning two-hectare plots, making their own planting decisions, and selling to local markets, one company owns or controls thousands of hectares.

They decide what gets planted, when it gets harvested, and where it goes.

The farmers who used to own and operate those plots often become labourers on land their families had farmed for generations.

Others enter outgrower schemes where they still farm, but the company sets the prices and controls the market access.

The land remains in production, but ownership and decision-making shift from many farmers to one corporation.

For the most part, this kind of agric surrogacy is how African agriculture is transforming. Not farm by farm, but corporation by corporation.

To understand how we got here, let's go back to....

Between 2008 and 2009, investors expressed interest in 56.6 million hectares globally, with 40 million of those hectares in Africa. 

That trend continues, and today, 37% of global large-scale agricultural investments happen in Africa. 

This makes sense as Africa has 65% of the world's uncultivated arable land.

Many African governments welcome these investments. 

The investments bring foreign capital. 

They promise jobs and agricultural modernisation. 

They generate headlines about transformation.

Countries like China, India, and Turkey are the largest sources of agricultural investment capital flowing into Africa.

European and American investment funds follow close behind.

But these investors aren't coming to Africa for charity. They're growing food in African countries and then exporting to their own populations. 

And even when it’s consumed locally, the value rarely stays, as profits flow back to investors.

These corporations capture profits smallholders never could, and the reasons are structural.

There are four main reasons why mega farms are more profitable than smallholder farmers.

A combine harvester costs $200,000 to $500,000.

For a farmer with two hectares, that investment will never pay back. But spread across 5,000 hectares, the per-hectare cost becomes negligible, and harvest happens in days instead of weeks.

Smallholders lack collateral, can't provide audited financial statements, and represent high risk for low returns from a bank's perspective. 

Megafarms, on the other hand, secure loans in the millions because they have registered land titles, corporate structures, and economies of scale that make repayment viable.

A grocery chain needs 10 tons of tomatoes every week, all meeting the same size and ripeness standards. 

One smallholder can't guarantee that, but a megafarm with coordinated planting schedules, quality control systems, and harvest planning can.

Shipping produce to Europe or the Middle East requires GlobalGAP certification, traceability systems, cold chain logistics, and phytosanitary compliance. 

These certifications cost tens of thousands of dollars and require infrastructure that smallholders simply don't have. 

The result of all this is simple.

Commercial farms produce 3–5x more per hectare, and attract more capital to keep scaling.

The business case works.

But it works by deprioritising the people already farming that land.

Most African land operates under customary law. 

Communities own it collectively. Chiefs hold it in trust. Families farm plots passed down through generations.

But customary rights often lack legal protection. 

In Nigeria, for example, no one actually owns land. The government does.

The Land Use Act of 1978 vests all land in each state in the hands of the state governor.

What Nigerians call "ownership" is actually a 99-year lease from the government.

This means the state can revoke or reallocate land for "overriding public interest," a vague term that includes agricultural development projects.

Across Africa, similar legal frameworks give governments broad powers over land allocation.

Customary land rights, even when recognised culturally, rarely translate to legal titles that can withstand government decisions.

When corporations want land, these claims don't stand in the way.

Many farmers have woken up to find their farms being cleared. 

Some receive compensation. Many don't. They just see bulldozers and construction crews on land their grandparents farmed.

The land that fed local communities now grows export crops. Flowers for Europe. Palm oil for Asia. Rice for premium markets.

And smallholder farmers usually face two options. 

Unfortunately, this displacement isn't slowing down. 

African governments are announcing even larger deals. And the latest sparked immediate outrage in Nigeria.

In March 2026, Nigeria announced a $900 million poultry sector with China. 

The plan seems simple enough. China is going to build six integrated farms in Nigeria, one per geopolitical zone.

Each will produce one million eggs daily.

Each farm gets 10,000 hectares for maize and soya production. 

That's 60,000 hectares total. 

Before long, Nigerian internet users combusted at the idea. 

The most popular question was “Why is the government not using the resources to support existing poultry farmers?”

Nigeria has thousands of small and medium-scale poultry operations. They face high feed costs, unreliable power, and limited credit access, among others. 

Many have shut down.

The government could use $900 million differently. Subsidise feed, for one. Or provide power infrastructure, guarantee loans, or even strengthen existing value chains.

Instead, it's building megafarms with foreign partners. 

Existing farmers will now compete with government-backed industrial operations.

 For the Nigerian government, the answer is straightforward. 

Large investments bring foreign capital immediately. They generate headlines. They let officials claim progress.

Supporting smallholder farmers is harder. 

It requires reforming land tenure systems. Building extension services. Fixing credit access. Creating market linkages. This takes years and delivers less dramatic announcements.

Governments use long-term leases to hand over communally-owned land. They don't need consent from farming communities. The deals happen between governments and corporations.

Ethiopia leased 3.6 million hectares between 2008 and 2018. Tanzania allocated over one million hectares. Mozambique has 2.7 million hectares under lease. Nigeria's $900 million poultry deal is the latest.

Revenue flows to government coffers. Political credit goes to officials. 

But this comes at a high cost: displacement, lost livelihoods, all fall on farming communities with limited political power.

Megafarms promise jobs and modernisation. 

But the math tells a different story.

Commercial farms produce 3-5 times more per hectare than smallholders. 

This productivity advantage is real and significant. 

But it comes at a cost that's rarely calculated upfront.

Studies across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Mozambique show that large-scale agricultural investments create far fewer jobs than they displace. 

The economic case for megafarms assumes these farms will operate at capacity, employ significant numbers of people, and contribute to local development. 

But the evidence suggests most do none of these things consistently.

The one thing it does well is fundamentally reshape who controls African land and how much the land contributes to its immediate community. 

Farmers lose land. They lose control. They're reduced to labour. 

And African agriculture transforms, but just not in ways that benefit the people who've always farmed it.

If megafarms improve food supply but displace farmers, is that a trade-off worth making?

👉🏾Tell us here.

Cheers,