In the first nine months of 2025, over N70 billion has been facilitated in commercial financing for agribusiness by the Nigeria Incentive-Based Risk Sharing System for Agricultural Lending (NIRSAL) Plc.
This is strongest annual performance by the agency since inception in 2013, representing nearly a quarter of the organisation’s cumulative N270 billion facilitated for agriculture and agribusiness to date.
Business Post gathered that the N70 billion facilitated so far this year is a direct outcome of NIRSAL’s sustained capacity-building efforts for financial institutions.
Through targeted training sessions for over 1,100 staff of banks, NIRSAL has deepened understanding of agricultural financing within its risk-sharing framework leading to an increase in loan request approvals.
Similar training programmes for agricultural value chain actors, including 450 participants trained on feedlot management, commodity export, and climate finance so far, will become increasingly evident over time, as capacity and confidence grow across these sub-sectors.
The chief executive of NIRSAL, Mr Sa’ad Hamidu, said this achievement may “appear modest compared to the size of Nigeria’s agricultural financing needs, the significance is profound.”
“It proves that agriculture can be commercially and sustainably financed. With the right blend of capital, technical support, and risk mitigation, the sector can become more productive, resilient, and globally competitive,” he added.
It was learned that the timing of this turnaround is critical, as bank lending to agriculture had been in steady decline, falling from 6.18 per cent of aggregate lending in 2022 to 4.82 per cent in 2024, while sectoral growth slowed from 2.5 per cent to 1.7 per cent within the same period.
By applying its signature tools for value chain modelling to address identified issues, providing technical support to agribusinesses and financial institutions, all while deploying its risk-sharing frameworks, NIRSAL has restored lender confidence thus channelling fresh funds into key value chains, including grains, cocoa, shea, and livestock.
In terms of impact, there has been an improvement in local production across key commodities and a positive balance of trade for agriculture, with over 32 per cent of the facilitated sum directly supporting value-added commodity export.
Most notably, agriculture’s share of bank lending has risen again to 5.33 per cent as of May 2025, reflecting renewed interest from financiers. Two newly licensed banks have also entered the sector relying on NIRSAL’s frameworks, contributing to the N70 billion facilitated so far this year.
But Mr Hamidu said his agency remains confident of hitting its N150 billion target for 2025, saying, “This is not yet the peak of the harvest season when merchants typically seek credit for offtake and storage, and when super agro-dealers stock up on fertilisers and inputs ahead of the next planting cycle. Therefore, the opportunities still to come give us every reason for optimism.”
As part of its forward agenda, NIRSAL is developing a digital network it calls the NIRSAL LandBank portal—a connected ecosystem of agricultural stakeholders, from research and development to markets, to provide data-driven insights for investors, policy makers, and development partners for the identification of opportunities, risk reduction, and informed decision-making.
The LandBank portal would become an additional channel for project development, with climate finance another potential source of funding. NIRSAL continues to deepen its interest in and collaboration around climate finance, recently signing an understanding with the Rural Electrification Agency to provide off-grid power to production and processing clusters in rural locations. These efforts, the institution believes, will build resilience into the agricultural value chain and aid Nigeria’s push toward a $1 trillion economy.