The $6.8M credit engine hidden inside a Nigerian cassava patch

When Alexander Zanders stood on a patch of land in Oyo State in 2015, he planned to build a simple processing plant. But as the naira plunged, importing machinery became impossible. Forced to pivot, Zanders bought 100 acres, started farming himself, and ran a small experiment supplying 15 local maize growers with inputs on credit. The result? Crop yields tripled, farmer revenues doubled, and Zanders extracted the financial signals hidden in the soil. In this feature, OPEYEMI KARREM tells the…