BOA unveils new digital services, expands farm financing

The Managing Director of the Bank of Agriculture, Ayo Sotinrin, has said the bank is digitising its operations and redesigning its financing model to improve support for farmers, describing the reforms as a complete overhaul of the institution’s operations.

Speaking to journalists on Thursday evening, he said the bank had since embarked on an ambitious digital transformation to position it alongside modern financial institutions.

“Now, what have we done so far? First things first: turn the so-called government agency into a government-owned bank. What that means is starting the bank afresh.

“We now say, if we’re at this point where we’re digitising everything, banks are aspiring as part of their own strategic plan to get to a level of digitisation in 2026.

“If we already know what the banks are planning, why can’t we just do everything that the banks are still planning to do, besides what they’ve done? So, we put together a technical working group. We brought in eight CTOs from Nigeria’s largest banks to help develop a roadmap for the bank’s technology infrastructure.

“And we started to change a lot of our controls and processes to more digital ones.”

According to him, the bank has replaced manual processes with digital banking platforms, enabling customers to access services through electronic channels.

“Rather than having a passbook where they do a subtraction of 10,000 Naira account, passbook is 20,000 Naira, 2,000 Naira, they subtract the variety there. And they fill all your stuff in a ledger within the bank branches. We did our core banking application.

“Typically now, the Bank of Agriculture will operate almost only through a bank account on the phone or on your computer.

“Now, on top of that, we have advanced the use of bank accounts to also having a wallet system. So, you have an electronic wallet system that also sits on top of your account, that’s sitting here. Meaning, if the government wants to continue to do intervention through the Bank of Agriculture, we can do it in a very transparent way where you load five bags of fertiliser on someone’s account, on his wallet.

“You load crop protection, maybe 20 litres of insecticides, and you load maybe 20 bags of seeds. By the time you get to maybe a collection centre, they have a POS where they can use to deduct money from your account. That same POS can deduct the inputs.

“So, if you say you want to plant in this particular area, maybe you have two farms, and you go to the first place to collect the inputs that government has given you for free, or the state government has given you for free. You can collect your four bags of fertiliser, two bags of seeds, and four cans of crop protection, and you plant. Now, by the time you finish that, and you go to the next location, you want to take more from your account, from another warehouse closer to your farm, and do the same.”

Sotinrin said the reforms formed part of a broader restructuring of the bank.

“We (Bank of Agriculture) are a full-for-profit bank, just that we are developmental in nature, meaning we prioritise impact first, which is why we do all this intervention and holding farmers in good digits and the likes of it.

“So by the time we set the stage with that context, it starts to open your mind as to why we do what we do. Yes, I took over the bank a year plus ago. And when I took over the bank, I somewhat realised that we were running like a parastatal of government or a government department, which we shouldn’t be.

“So the first thing we did was, first of all, let us do some sort of self-reflection. Who should we be as a bank? We are not NADF, which is set up by an act. So the first thing we needed to do was somewhat refine ourselves by focusing on our mantras, what I call the three R’s.”

He said the bank’s strategy focuses on restructuring, recapitalisation and improving operational efficiency.

“One is to restructure the bank, restructuring meaning all the internal workings of the bank or the housekeeping, applying technology and whatnot, and also understanding the mission and the vision. Two is to recapitalise the bank, because without money you can’t do anything.”

The BOA boss added that the institution had also introduced a new financing model that lends through farmer aggregation companies instead of relying mainly on individual micro-credit facilities, saying the approach would reduce costs and improve loan recovery.

“So we have now designed new protocols, new systems, new ways of financing the sector, which is financing through farmer aggregation companies.”

He also disclosed that the bank developed the Renewed Hope Smallholder Support and Value Chain Programme, which secured Federal Government funding to support smallholder farmers.

“Designing a product to suit farmers is very different from a conventional bank product So, first of all, we designed a programme called the Renewed Hope Smallholder Support and Value Chain Programme.

“So, we designed that product, and we sold the product to this administration.

“The president gave a quarter of a trillion to the Bank of Agriculture for this programme for us to finance smallholder farmers. So if we’re entrusted with such responsibility, who are we to sleep? Let alone not design a programme that works.”

The latest reforms build on the restructuring agenda unveiled by Sotinrin when he assumed office as the Bank of Agriculture’s managing director in April 2025. At the time, he pledged to reposition the bank through recapitalisation, digitisation of its branches and smart banking solutions, while expanding financial inclusion for farmers in rural communities. He also said the bank would deploy capital more efficiently, strengthen agricultural value chains and support the Federal Government’s food security drive.

The restructuring drive is also part of a broader effort to modernise the Bank of Agriculture, whose reform has been under consideration by successive administrations. In 2017, the Federal Government inaugurated a steering committee to restructure and recapitalise the bank, with plans to transform it from a largely manual institution into a technology-driven agricultural finance bank capable of providing improved credit access to farmers and agribusinesses.