The Let's Talk Agriculture Podcast

Why can a promising agribusiness struggle to secure financing? In this episode of Inside The Food Economy, Sharon speaks with Eze Nwakanma, who leads agribusiness and non-oil exports at Union Bank, about how agricultural finance works and what lenders look for.

Nwakanma explains why financing needs differ across farming, processing, and exports. He shares how farmer aggregation can make lending more viable, why proof of concept and verifiable cash flow matter, and what factors banks consider when assessing a business, from repayment capacity and market access to seed quality, irrigation, and crop suitability.

The conversation also explores the challenges facing primary production in Nigeria, including insecurity, low yields, limited mechanisation, side-selling, and the need to attract younger people to agriculture. Nwakanma makes the case for development finance and credit guarantees, and explains why commercial lending alone cannot sustainably meet the sector’s financing needs.

Together, Sharon and Nwakanma unpack what agribusinesses can do to become more investment-ready and what needs to change to support a stronger food economy.

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In this episode of Inside the Food Economy, we look at the role of finance in Africa’s agrifood sector with Dorothy Kyomuhangi Senior Investment Associate at Pearl Capital Partners.

Dorothy shares her perspective on financing agribusinesses, the types of businesses attracting capital, and what it takes to deploy patient and appropriately structured capital across production, aggregation, processing, value addition and distribution.

We also discuss the realities of investing across East Africa and the wider Sub-Saharan African market, and what businesses need to understand when seeking capital for growth.

Inside the Food Economy is a special series on the Let’s Talk Agriculture Podcast by LTA Forum, exploring how different parts of Africa’s food economy work through the people building, financing and operating within them.

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In this episode, Sharon Nkwah speaks with Ramesh Moochikal, CEO of Africa Improved Foods, about nutrition manufacturing and the role it plays within Africa’s food economy.

They discuss how nutrition-focused food manufacturing works, sourcing raw materials, quality and production, the economics behind the business, working with smallholder farmers, public-private partnerships, and operating across different African markets.

Ramesh also shares his perspective on what Africa needs to build more food and nutrition manufacturing businesses.

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For collaboration with LTA Forum and podcast sponsorship, email us at [email protected]

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When we hear the word innovation, we often think about technology.

But what if innovation could be as simple as developing a better seed?

In this episode of the Let's Talk Agriculture Podcast, Sharon Nkwah is joined by Dr. Gloria Adazebra, Research Scientist and Plant Breeder at CSIR–Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI), Ghana, for a conversation on what it really means to design agricultural innovation around the people it is meant to serve.

Using cowpea as a practical example, Dr. Gloria explains how plant breeding goes beyond science in the laboratory to understanding the everyday realities of farmers. The conversation explores gender-responsive plant breeding, improving crop varieties, strengthening food security, and why listening to farmers is essential to building more resilient agricultural systems across Africa.

Whether you're a researcher, policymaker, agribusiness professional, student, or simply interested in the future of agriculture, this episode offers practical insights into how innovation can create meaningful impact.

In this episode:

- What agricultural innovation really means

- Why better seeds matter

- How farmers shape scientific research

- Understanding gender-responsive plant breeding

- The story behind improved cowpea varieties

- The future of agricultural innovation in Africa

Guest: Dr. Gloria Adazebra  

Research Scientist & Plant Breeder, CSIR–Savanna Agricultural Research Institute (CSIR-SARI), Ghana

🔗 Learn more:

- CSIR Ghana

- Alliance for Cowpea Improvement

- Additional resources

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When we think about infrastructure in agriculture, we often think about roads, logistics, finance, technology and inputs.

But what if one of the most important infrastructures is something we rarely talk about?

Communication.

In this solo episode, Sharon Nkwah shares why communication is more than social media or publicity, and why communication, media and editorial are three connected systems that shape how industries grow, learn and create opportunities.

She explores:

- Why many organisations struggle to communicate their work consistently.

- What happens when great work remains invisible.

- The business cost of poor communication.

- Why African agriculture needs stronger communication, media and editorial systems.

- The thinking behind how Let's Talk Agriculture Advisory was built.

If you're a founder, executive, programme leader or organization working across agriculture and food systems, this episode will challenge how you think about communication—and why it matters far beyond marketing.

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Hosted by: Sharon Nkwah

For collaborations:

📩 [email protected]

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Everyone agrees that Africa needs to produce more food. But what happens after production?

In this episode of the Let’s Talk Agriculture Podcast, Sharon Nkwah sits down with Forrest Patrick Branch, Co-Founder and Managing Director of Kolagri SARL, to explore why increasing production alone is not enough to transform African agriculture.

Drawing from more than three decades of experience across the SADC region, Forrest shares practical insights on the realities of building and strengthening vertically integrated agribusiness value chains. The conversation examines the challenges many founders face as they attempt to move beyond production into storage, processing, market access, and long-term growth.

Together, they discuss:

• Why production is only one part of the agricultural system

• The barriers preventing agribusinesses from scaling

• The importance of value chain thinking

• The transition point where businesses either grow or stagnate

• What founders and agricultural leaders should pay attention to as they build for the future

If you're interested in agribusiness growth, agricultural investment, food systems, and the realities of building sustainable agricultural enterprises in Africa, this episode is for you.

Guest:

Forrest Patrick Branch is the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Kolagri SARL, an agribusiness company focused on grain storage and milling within the maize value chain. Based between Namibia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, he has spent more than 30 years leading agribusiness initiatives across the SADC region.

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As sustainability reporting becomes more important across global agriculture, farmers are increasingly being asked to provide more data around how food is produced, sourced, and managed.

But what happens when many of these systems are too technical, time-consuming, or simply not designed around the realities farmers face every day?

In this episode, Sharon Nkwah sits down with Charis Aherne, Head of Agricultural Impact at VSAg, to discuss the growing pressure around sustainability reporting, the challenges farmers face with current systems, and how simpler tools like mobile video and AI-supported data collection could help make the process more practical and accessible.

The conversation also explores what these changes could mean for food systems, supply chains, and farmers across emerging markets in the years ahead.

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In this episode, Sharon breaks down how trust actually shapes work across African markets, often in ways organisations underestimate.

Rather than treating trust as an abstract idea or a communications problem, this conversation looks at how trust affects access, timelines, resistance, and day-to-day decision-making. It explores why effort alone can't compensate for a trust gap, why standard performance metrics often miss what's really happening, and why consistency matters more than intensity.

This episode is part of January's editorial focus on authority and foundations, alongside the latest edition of Roots & Reach, which examines how authority is built, recognised, and withdrawn in African markets.

In This Episode

1. Why trust is often noticed only when things feel stuck
2. How trust shows up in access, timelines, and resistance
3. Why you can't outwork a trust gap with more effort
4. What consistency actually signals to the market
5. Why trust is ultimately a leadership issue, not a messaging one

Engage With the Podcast

The Let's Talk Agriculture podcast features:

1. Editorially curated conversations (by invitation)
2. Podcast partnerships (short- to medium-term)
3. Branded or thematic mini-series developed with partner organisations

For inquiries or collaborations, email [email protected] or sign up here.

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Trust is often treated as a by-product of visibility.

In many African markets, it isn't.

In this episode of the Let's Talk Agriculture podcast, we slow the conversation down and examine how trust and authority are actually built and lost across African markets.

We talk about why being visible doesn't automatically make organisations credible, how trust is assessed quietly through behaviour and patterns, and why leadership decisions matter more than messaging when it comes to legitimacy.

This episode builds on our January Roots & Reach edition, Authority Is Built, Not Claimed, and explores what that idea looks like in practice.

If you work across African markets, this is a conversation worth sitting with.

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