Lagos Food Hubs Reducing Food Prices, Creating Jobs, Says Sanwo–Olu

Lagos State governor, Mr Babajide Sanwo-Olu, asserted that the state’s network of mid-level agro-produce food hubs in different parts of the state has helped to reduce food prices, cut post-harvest losses and create thousands of jobs.

Sanwo-Olu, who stated this at the commissioning of the Lagos Fresh Food Hub at Pen Cinema, Agege, described the facility as a major component of his administration’s efforts to build a more efficient, affordable and resilient food system for the state.

The governor said the hubs were designed to shorten food supply chains, eliminate unnecessary layers of intermediation and provide modern infrastructure for the handling, storage and distribution of agricultural produce.

According to him, the initiative is already yielding results at the Fresh Food Hub in Mushin, commissioned in December 2023.

Since its commissioning, the Fresh Food Hub, Mushin, has recorded transactions valued at over N4 billion across 228 market days, with more than 850 registered vendors and over 7,000 direct and indirect jobs created,” Sanwo-Olu said.

He added that the figures demonstrated the capacity of properly designed food infrastructure to go beyond providing trading spaces and become catalysts for economic growth and improved livelihoods.

“Well-designed market infrastructure does far more than provide a place to sell food: it improves farmers’ incomes, reduces post-harvest losses, creates jobs, and strengthens local economies,” he said.

Sanwo-Olu said the Agege facility was strategically located to serve residents of Agege and neighbouring communities while strengthening the wider food distribution network across Lagos.

He explained that the state began rethinking its food system in 2021 after recognising that feeding a rapidly growing megacity would require more than simply increasing food production.

The governor said the strategy was built around an interconnected hub-and-spoke model, with the Central Food Security Systems and Logistics Hub serving as the major aggregation and logistics platform from which food would move to middle-level hubs located closer to communities.

He said the Agege, Abijo, Mushin and other hubs being developed should therefore be seen not as isolated markets but as interconnected components of a single food distribution network.

Sanwo-Olu said the network would help address challenges associated with traditional food trading, including poor handling and storage, post-harvest losses, traffic congestion caused by food logistics and inadequate trading conditions.

In her welcome address, the Commissioner for Agriculture and Food Systems, Abisola Olusanya, said the Agege hub represented another important node in the state’s emerging food distribution network.

Olusanya said the project was developed in partnership with Origin Tech Group to move food more efficiently into and across Lagos while reducing losses and improving understanding of the state’s largely informal food distribution system.

She said the Central Food Security Systems and Logistics Hub would serve as the mothership for the network. At the same time, middle-level hubs would bring aggregation, storage, wholesale and retail distribution closer to consumers.