By Gabriel Ewepu

ABUJA- AS food and nutrition security remain paramount for the survival of Nigerian, an agribusiness firm, Cubeseed, has taken it upon itself to digitize the livestock ecosystem for the ease of doing business.

This was made known by the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, and Co-Founder, Cubeseed, Mbanefo Chinonyelum; Chief Product Officer and Co-Founder, Cubeseed, Elohor Rita Ebieroma; and Chief Techonology Officer and Co-Founder, Cubeseed, Akeem Suara while speaking at the pilot launch of Cubeseed held in Lagos State. 

The launch had in attendance venture capitalists, tech entrepreneurs, commercial farmers, cold room operators, restaurant and hotel owners, food processors, logistics partners, and financial institutions including Sterling Bank, Poultry Association of Nigeria, PAN, hospitality consultants supply chain processors.

According to Cubeseed team, it was not a pitch deck presentation, but a demonstration that the livestock value chain had been fragmented for decades, but could be coordinated with the right ideas and strategies for every value chain player to benefit seamlessly in order to boost food and nutrition security.

Cubeseed is an agriculture startup using technology to coordinate an ecosystem that was never coordinated—and needed coordination desperately. The pilot launch wasn’t a victory lap, it was an invitation to farmers to register, buyers to source reliably, processors to aggregate predictably, and financiers to lend confidently.

Against a backdrop of 1.5 million tonnes of annual poultry demand and only 30 per cent being met locally, the infrastructure to close that gap now exists. Cubeseed is operating with a clear roadmap: Seller acquisition: Building the farmer database beyond the current 4,000+ Buyer penetration: Signing restaurant chains, hotels, food processors, and distributors; Operational excellence: Building out the listing and categorization taxonomy for livestock products; Revenue generation: Pursuing the 1.5 per cent commission model on transactions; Embedded financing & Insurance: Scaling the Sterling Bank partnership for BNPL access; The commission model (1.5 per cent on seller transactions) means the unit economics are favorable from day one. The embedded finance creates revenue optionality. The data layer becomes increasingly valuable as transaction volume grows.

Meanwhile, explaining on how the vision came and how it was made a reality, according to the Chief Executive Officer, CEO and Co-Founder, Cubeseed, Mbanefo Chinonyelum , in 2022, he made a decision that would cost him everything, as a commercial poultry farmer in Oyo State then, he produced, processed and sold thousands of birds. Then came the moment that changed his trajectory: a buyer collected his goods and promised payment “in a couple of weeks.” To this day, he is still waiting.

He said that single transaction, a loss he never recovered from, revealed something deeper than personal fraud. It was a pattern, because across Nigeria’s livestock industry, farmers struggled with delayed payments and unreliable buyers, and buyers faced inconsistent supply and quality while processors struggled to secure reliable volumes, and added that trust was missing across the entire value chain.

“I realised this wasn’t a production problem. We can produce enough poultry to feed Nigeria. The problem was the system”, he stated, and that insight became the foundation of Cubeseed.

He continued, “An investor can invest and be sure of their return,”Chinonyelum had said in earlier interviews, and he said, “I have been scammed before. I know what it is like. That’s why we’re building this.”

For Cubeseed’s Chief Product Officer, Elohor Ebieroma, the story sounded familiar. According to Ebieroma, while growing up, she watched her uncle struggle to find buyers for eggs from his poultry farm. Producing them was one thing; finding reliable buyers and getting paid on time was another. At 16, she and her siblings often helped distribute crates of eggs to customers, giving her an early glimpse into the realities many farmers face long after production is complete.

Years later, when she joined Chinonyelum and Akeem Suara to build Cubeseed, she recognised the same challenge from a different angle. Farmers could produce. Buyers needed supply. But connecting both sides in a way that was transparent, reliable and trusted remained a problem. That shared understanding would go on to shape Cubeseed’s mission: building a more structured and trusted way for agricultural trade to happen.

Meanwhile, the move with Cubeseed, the desired attention it deserves has since attracted positive attention, according to them, in January 2026, just months after the building began, their vision caught the attention of investors and industry stakeholders, which Cubeseed won the Lagos Innovate Idea Hub 12.0, sponsored by the Lagos State Employment Trust Fund (LSETF), validating the problem they set out to solve.

By the time of the pilot launch, the team had already validated the core insight: in the no-code version they’d tested earlier, they’d generated ₦27 million in orders in one week—far exceeding their capacity to fulfill. The demand wasn’t the question. The system to coordinate supply at scale was.

The Poultry Association of Nigeria, PAN, has also validated the initiative. Meanwhile, processors like the Chief Executive Officer, CEO, Ditec Farms Limited, Olugbenga Samuel of Ditec Farms Limited spoke to the operational challenges the platform solves and the why fragmentation costs the entire ecosystem. 

“A processor like me might secure an order for 15 tons of chicken per week from Port Harcourt. But I can’t find 10 farmers who can reliably deliver 1.5 tonnes weekly. So the order gets lost. 

“Meanwhile, those 10 farmers don’t have a buyer. Everyone loses. This is what the industry needed, not technology for technology’s sake but coordination”, Samuel said.

Cubeseed’s cluster matching solves this. Smallholder farmers in the same geography are routed to the same processor. That processor can now aggregate their supply for bulk buyers, and bulk buyers get reliable, consistent supply without chasing dozens of farms.

The Head of Agricultural Risk Management at Sterling Bank, Femi Majekodunmi, articulated why financial institutions were so eager to partner.

“In agriculture, we have traditionally perceived transactions as high-risk without financing. But when you have a coordinated system that is data-backed and has visibility, funding becomes easier. You can see what’s actually happening. You can make informed decisions”, Majekodunmi said.

However, Sterling Bank has committed more than 18 per cent of its total loan portfolio to agriculture—the highest proportion of any Nigerian bank. Yet, even with that commitment, agricultural lending remained cautious. The livestock sector, in particular, was seen as too fragmented, informal, and risky.

“This gives confidence,” Akeem Suara, the CTO, explained. “I might not know the seller personally. But the platform knows them beyond reasonable doubt. And if something goes wrong, they’re traceable.”

Additionally, Cubeseed employs what Suara called “time-bounded flows. If a farmer accepts an order but doesn’t begin processing within a set timeframe, the order auto-cancels—no wasted farmer resources. If a buyer hasn’t paid within the designated window, the order is aborted. If a delivery stalls, the system flags it. “Everyone has to bring their A-game. The incentive structure is built in.”

The recognition was significant. Nigeria consumes approximately 1.5 million tonnes of poultry meat annually, roughly one billion birds. Yet, according to industry experts and market data cited by Gbolade Adewole of natnudO Foods’ Broiler Outgrower Scheme, only 30 percent of this demand is met locally. The implication was stark: Nigerian farmers are leaving an estimated ₦600 billion in sales on the table.