A working marketplace-and-training prototype for Ikot Ekpene farmers: sell produce to verified buyers, browse a buyers' market with search and listings, check local weather, and ask an agricultural expert in chat. Interactive, with sample data and no sign-up. Built under Afrinovators, a student agritech think tank at ALU.
Despite the Akwa Ibom Government's ARISE Agenda (2023) and related youth-empowerment programmes, unemployment in Ikot Ekpene sits at 51%, the second highest in Nigeria (NBS, 2022). It hits youths, graduates, women and low-income households hardest.
The land produces; the value leaks out before it reaches the people who farmed it. Smallholders sell to whatever buyer is physically nearby, at whatever price is offered, with no capital to wait for a better one, and with roughly one extension officer per 2,000+ farmers, almost no support in between.
Agrilink is the product answer: connect farmers to buyers directly, and to credit, so a harvest becomes income rather than a distress sale.
Because Afrinovators' real risk was ending as a well-argued report, the prototype is deliberately interactive: sample data, no sign-up, tappable on a phone. My role was making sure it ended as something you could open and use instead.
