The managing-director of the Bank of Agriculture (BOA), Ayodeji Sotinrin said the bank is repositioning its operations around digital lending, farmer aggregation, mechanisation and value-chain financing as part of strategy to transform the institution into a commercially viable development bank capable of reaching millions of Nigerian farmers.

Sotinrin said the bank was moving away from the model of operating like a government department to a technology-driven financial institution focused on sustainable agricultural finance and measurable impact.

While speaking to journalists in Abuja yesterday, the MD said the transformation was anchored on the bank’s “three Rs” — restructuring, recapitalisation and repositioning with technology at the centre of its new operating model.

According to him, the bank has since deployed core banking, internet and mobile banking platforms, upgraded its payment infrastructure and introduced digital cards capable of storing customers’ identification information.

He said the new system would enable BOA to improve its “Know Your Farmer” (KYF) processes while using artificial intelligence to automate transactions, monitor farmer accounts and reduce the cost of administering agricultural loans.

Sotinrin said the bank had also shifted from lending directly to millions of individual smallholder farmers towards financing through farmer aggregation companies, which would reduce transaction and recovery costs while improving monitoring and accountability.

“This approach is being deployed under programmes including the Renewed Hope Smallholder Support and Value Chain Programme, backed by a N250 billion allocation from the federal government”, he said.

The MD said BOA was also developing a guaranteed minimum price programme, backed by about N300 billion to address price volatility and protect farmers from farm-gate prices falling below production costs.

Rather than simply subsidising farmers, he said BOA would aggregate commodities and release them into the market when prices rise excessively, creating a mechanism capable of supporting producers while moderating market distortions.

“We are a full-for-profit bank, just that we are developmental in nature, meaning we prioritise impact first. When I took over the bank, I somewhat realised that we were running like a parastatum of government or government department, which shouldn’t be.

We’ve now designed new protocols, new systems, new ways of financing the sector, which is financing through farmer aggregation companies. We move from the BOA that you know to the Bank of Agriculture 2.0, ” he said.

The bank is also targeting agricultural productivity through specialised value-chain interventions.

Sotinrin said BOA’s ginger revitalisation programme had selected nearly 4,000 farmers to receive disease-free ginger planting materials, with plans to use tissue-culture technology to multiply planting materials and expand production into more states.

He said the initiative could potentially help Nigeria increase ginger output substantially and raise export earnings from the crop, while tackling the underlying disease problem rather than merely providing financing.

On agricultural produce mobility, the bank is also exploring electric cargo tricycles to reduce farm-to-market logistics constraints and post-harvest losses, as well as establishing agricultural hubs where farmers can access inputs, mechanisation, financial services, storage and markets.

Sotinrin said the long-term objective was to build farmer credit histories that would allow smallholders to progress into formal MSME and SME financing without relying solely on conventional collateral.

“We are talking about transforming a sector that can directly impact over 2 million farmers across the country,” Sotinrin said. “This ginger value chain alone is not just about production; it is about livelihoods, about rural income, and about building a globally competitive export economy that can generate up to $2 billion annually if we get it right.”

He added, “When you look at the scale, you are looking at millions of smallholder farmers who will be integrated into a structured value chain. The goal is to ensure that at least 2 million farmers are directly or indirectly benefiting from improved inputs, better yields, and guaranteed market access through this programme.

He said the reforms were designed to deliver what he called “Bank of Agriculture 2.0”, to position the institution as a commercially disciplined but development-focused lender capable of mobilising capital into Nigeria’s food and agricultural economy.