Nigeria holds considerable potential for vegetable production, which can help meet the high domestic demand for fresh produce and improve the country’s food security. Yet, many farmers struggle with low productivity and getting vegetables fast to market in good condition remains a major challenge. Post-harvest losses, mismatches between supply and demand, and reliance on informal marketing arrangements continue to constrain the growth and potential of Nigeria’s horticultural sector.

To address these challenges, the HortiNigeria program focuses on productivity as well as on Business-to-Business (B2B) aspect of the value chain. Since 2021, this four-year program has been supporting Nigeria’s horticulture sector to become more sustainable, inclusive, and better organised. Funded by the Royal Netherlands Embassy, the program is implemented by IFDC in partnership with Wageningen Research, East-West Seed, and KIT Institute.

Over the years, we have collected data from practice on the ground and reflected on it against theory to understand how B2B linkages are organised in the horticulture sector in Nigeria, how they operate, and what challenges need to be addressed. In this blog, you will find out what we have learnt so far.

Key takeaways

B2B linkages take the shape of networks

In most textbooks, “B2B” simply means one company doing business with another (Håkansson & Snehota, 1995). But in Nigeria’s vegetable markets, things aren’t that straightforward. Instead of neat contracts between two firms, we see webs of interactions that bring together smallholder farmers, aggregators, transporters, brokers and market agents. B2B linkages involve networks of multiple actors, which are highly informal and dynamic. These networks are shaped more by trust, reputation, and social connections than by formal contracts, as noted in the literature (Boafo et al., 2022). In the Nigerian context, it is therefore more accurate to speak of a “B2B linkages network” rather than simply B2B linkages.

Central actors play a key role in B2B linkage networks

By comparing a series of cases of B2B linkage networks in the horticultural sector in Nigeria, we observed a pattern: each network typically has one central actor who establishes it, coordinating the enrollment of other actors. These central actors create B2B linkage networks by aligning partners in production, aggregation and marketing, motivating participation, and addressing issues such as transport and supply consistency. This observation aligns well with actor-network theory (ANT), which we adopted as an analytical lens for further understanding B2B linkages. ANT provides a holistic view of the network, examining interactions, dependencies, and power dynamics within the system (Latour, 2005).

In ANT, the central actor plays a crucial role as the key coordinator and connector. This actor initiates the network, facilitates communication and collaboration among members, and helps to align goals and resources. By managing relationships and information flows, and by continuously introducing innovations, the central actor ensures that the network stabilises in a changing context and continues to function effectively and eventually expands.

Central actors introduce organisational and marketing innovations to strengthen the network

In a highly dynamic economic context, such as Nigeria’s horticulture sector, new challenges and opportunities arise daily. As suggested in ANT, we observed that the central actors of B2B linkage networks respond to these challenges and opportunities by introducing innovations, in particular organisational and marketing innovations. These innovations are often small-scale, incremental, and bottom-up, “invented” and “owned” by the central actors.

The documented examples of these innovations include collective transport arrangements, which allow smallholders to share trucks and access large city markets like Lagos. There are supermarket supply networks. Entrepreneurial farmers organise others to meet quality standards. Farmer-buyer WhatsApp groups help match supply and demand in real time. Cluster models bring farmers together to share resources, receive training, and negotiate better deals. Plastic crates replace traditional woven baskets to reduce losses and keep produce fresh.

The road ahead for B2B networks in Nigeria’s Horticulture sector

In sum, the ANT perspective helps us understand how B2B linkages networks bring horticulture produce to the market within Nigeria’s informal and dynamic horticulture sector and how organisational and marketing innovations are introduced. Given the opportunity to better meet the domestic demand for vegetables, as many farmers, aggregators and marketers are still not well connected, efforts to strengthen the sector should, among other things, focus on enabling regular actors to take the initiative to organise networks in which they can act as central players. More specifically, such efforts should address the following challenges and opportunity areas:

1. Strengthening entrepreneurship among regular actors in the sector, particularly youth, by developing their organisational and management capacities and skills so they can become central actors.
2. Promoting the organisation of horticultural producers, especially smallholder farmers, around these central actors. Supporting farmer organisations (groups, clusters, cooperatives) is the recommended approach for this.
3. Enabling central actors to manage the high level of informality in the sector by fostering trust-building platforms and providing legal protection.
4. Addressing logistical and transport constraints by equipping central actors with knowledge and investment support in storage, transport, financing, and the organisation of transporters.
5. Facilitating the matching of supply and demand by supporting central actors with digital matching tools and standardised marketing platforms to improve coordination.
6. Improving transparency in price-setting. Assisting central actors in disseminating price information and piloting auction models can enhance perceived fairness among farmers and strengthen trust.
7. Improving post-harvest handling by raising awareness and building capacity in grading, sorting, processing, and packaging. This can improve outcomes when supported by processing and packaging expertise.
8. Accelerating the uptake of digital marketing among central actors by improving smartphone access, demonstrating benefits, and engaging tech-savvy youth to promote adoption.

If you would like to learn more about how B2B linkages networks drive horticulture marketing, please reach out to our advisor Jaap Voeten. You can access the full learning brief here.

References

• Boafo, C., Owusu, R. A., & Guiderdoni-Jourdain, K. (2022). Understanding internationalisation of informal African firms through a network perspective. International Small Business Journal: Researching Entrepreneurship, 40(5), 618–649. https://doi.org/10.1177/02662426211054099
• Håkansson, H., & Snehota, I. (1995). Developing relationships in business networks. Routledge.
• Latour, B. (2005). Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford University Press.