The Nigeria Commodity Exchange (NCX), the regulated marketplace where Nigerian farmers and producers can store their produce in certified warehouses and sell it at transparent prices instead of to whoever turns up at harvest time, has launched a Guaranteed Minimum Price programme for more than 500,000 farmers, the latest in a series of steps that have taken it from planning to practice under its Managing Director/CEO, Anthony Atuche.
NCX was founded in 1998 as the Abuja Securities and Commodities Exchange and took its present name in 2011. It is licensed by the Securities and Exchange Commission as a self-regulatory organisation and sits under the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment. Its job is to give agriculture and solid minerals what the stock exchange gives shares: a place with rules, standards and published prices.
The price programme, launched in September with the Bank of Agriculture (BOA) and the All Farmers Association of Nigeria (AFAN), seeks to secure 400,000 metric tonnes of grains. Announcing it, Atuche said, “For decades, post-harvest losses and predatory middleman dynamics have eroded farmer incomes.”
It rests on storage and finance arrangements the exchange has put in place over the past two years. In 2024, NCX signed an agreement with CGC Nigeria Limited to expand storage capacity, with the aim of giving farmers access to 500,000 metric tonnes. It has since begun working with Zebra CropBank on storage and processing facilities. In July 2025, it partnered The Alternative Bank to let farmers use electronic warehouse receipts as collateral, so they can raise money against stored produce without selling at the lowest prices of the season. NCX said the arrangement would strengthen price discovery and reduce “distress selling.”
The exchange has also taken its model to the states. Late last year, it signed an agreement with the Benue Investment and Property Company, and in March it commissioned an office in Benue to run warehouse receipt operations there. The state is the anchor of NCX’s North Central Commodity Pilot Program. NCX has also held talks with the Kano State investment promotion agency, KANINVEST, on frameworks to expand commodity trading and improve market access, and with the Taraba State Government on a structured marketplace for the state’s produce.
In June, NCX unveiled a Shea Value Chain Transformation Framework at a stakeholders’ forum, with a target of processing at least 30 per cent of the country’s raw shea nuts locally rather than exporting them raw. Atuche told the forum that “no market can function efficiently without reliable data,” which is why the framework is built around certified warehouses, warehouse receipt numbers and a dedicated trading platform.
Governance has kept pace. President Bola Tinubu approved Dalhatu Abubakar as chairman of the exchange’s board, and the Minister of Industry, Trade and Investment, Dr Jumoke Oduwole, inaugurated the board in Abuja on April 8. She described NCX as an institution that “sits at the centre of Nigeria’s non-oil export strategy.”
On the farm side, the World Food Programme, working with the Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works initiative, is partnering with NCX to support 50,000 smallholder farmers, mostly youth and women, growing sorghum and millet in the north-east and north-west. On the export side, the exchange has signed a partnership with the Africa Trade and Distribution Company, an Afreximbank initiative, and is working with the Federal Government to establish a National Export Trading Company.
All of this has happened under a managing director who came to the exchange from the investment world. President Tinubu appointed Atuche in October 2023, ending the tenure of the transitional management team the Central Bank of Nigeria had put in place at NCX. A CFA charterholder, he studied at Imperial College London and spent his earlier career in private equity, with stints at Duet Private Equity and TLG Capital, working on investments and operations across sub-Saharan Africa. NCX says that background in raising capital and managing stakeholders is what suits him to the task of building a commodity market.
When NCX relaunched its website in 2024, Atuche said the aim was to make it “the foremost commodity exchange in Nigeria and beyond.” Two years on, the warehouses, partners and price guarantee now in place show how he intends to get there.
Samuel Agboola is a member of the editorial team of TheScript Newspapers
