Mrs. Rose Dauda farms two hectares of Irish potatoes in Farin Lamba, Plateau State, Nigeria. Wife, mother of three, and someone who’s had her hands in the soil for as long as she can remember. Potatoes are her primary crop, with maize and soybeans filling in the margins. Two seasons a year and twenty bags per harvest was her rhythm for years.
She worked hard and the land produced. But Rose had almost no control over what happened after harvest.
“Before, I used to harvest about 20 bags of potatoes each season. I farmed twice a year, and this was my main source of livelihood, but so often my efforts were limited by things I couldn’t control.”
Rose Dauda Badung
She could not control timing, market access, and power. Rose sold at the farm gate or nearby markets during peak harvest when every other farmer was also selling and supply was flooding the market. Intermediaries knew exactly how that timing worked, they’d offer what they’d offer, and Rose would take it because she had no storage to wait for better prices and she needed cash immediately.
Rose created significant value on her farm, but the value chain structure ensured most of it flowed to others.
What shifted Rose’s position in the value chain wasn’t just capital, it was infrastructure and information.
Through the Africa Growth Fund via Chui Ventures portfolio company PricePally, Rose accessed input financing to purchase improved potato seeds and fertilizer early in the season, before prices climbed and supply tightened. But the money alone wouldn’t have changed the fundamental dynamics. What changed everything was business training that taught her two things: how to see her farm’s economics clearly, and how to sell collectively instead of alone.
Rose started keeping records, tracking expenses, yields, sales. For the first time in her farming life, she could calculate actual profit instead of guessing whether the season had been good or just busy. Financial visibility transformed how she understood what she was doing. In addition to planting, she is managing an enterprise with inputs, outputs, costs, and margins she could control.
Then came collective aggregation. Instead of each farmer selling individually at the farm gate to whoever showed up, Rose and other farmers began pooling their harvest. Larger volumes attracted better buyers willing to pay competitive prices. The value chain dynamics flipped.
“Before, I sold alone,” she explains. “Now we bring our harvest together, and buyers come to us.”
That shift, from isolated price-taker to part of a collective with market power, changed everything about her negotiating position. She now has control over when and where she sells instead of accepting whatever price is offered in the moment she harvests.
The economic results reflect the structural change.
Rose’s yield jumped from 20 bags per season to 90-100 bags. Her seasonal income nearly doubled. She plants with working capital now instead of debt. She sells with market power instead of desperation.
Her farm employs up to 20 seasonal laborers during planting and harvest, creating jobs and supporting livelihoods in Farin Lamba. But perhaps the most significant impact extends beyond her own farm. Rose has become a resource for other women farmers in her community. Though she holds no formal leadership title, farmers seek her guidance on improved seeds, record-keeping, and better farming practices. She’s mentoring others through the same transformation she experienced.
She’s planning to expand from 2 to 3 hectares, diversify into cabbage and maize production, and employ more workers. She knows what she needs: access to larger financing and improved storage facilities that give her even more control over market timing.
Rose reflects on the moment everything changed:
“The day I began writing down my farm expenses and realized how much I could improve my profits. That was when I stopped seeing farming as just a way of life and started seeing it as a business.”
This is what value chain transformation looks like at the producer level.
What changed was her access to three things: working capital that let her buy quality inputs strategically, business training that made farm economics visible, and collective market access that shifted her from powerless seller to supplier with negotiating leverage.
Plateau State has thousands of potato farmers operating exactly where Rose was, productive but trapped in value chains structured to extract the value they create. Rose proved the structure can change, with different market position, comes different economic outcomes.
