Nafeesat Rabiu-Adebayo · PhD · Agricultural Policy, Food Systems & Trade

The systems that feed us, and the evidence that moves them.

I work across the full length of the food system, from fertilizer and farm inputs to trade, program strategy, and the evidence that guides where resources go. My career has run from the field to the ministry to the trade corridor, and my whole subject is closing the distance between what institutions build and what reaches the people it was meant for.

Agricultural policy & food systems strategist · Program leadership · Research, evaluation & trade

What institutions hold
The food grown, the aid funded, the knowledge held
What rural lives receive
The household fed, the farmer paid, the future secured
The Last Mile
The Idea

The Last Mile

The world already grows enough food, and it already knows how to farm. Hunger and rural poverty survive somewhere quieter, in the last mile between what institutions produce and what actually reaches the farmer.

That distance is where food security is decided, and few people have worked it from every side. I have. I have trained smallholder farmers as an extension officer, moved fertilizer at national scale, built technology meant to cross the gap, evaluated the aid designed to close it, and carried what I found back into the rooms where the decisions are made, from government ministries to the institutions that finance food systems.

My doctoral research named one version of the problem. Aid can lift a country's exports while quietly raising the cost of trading, so the gains register at the institution and never reach the people who grew the goods. The pattern repeats wherever food moves. The work, every time, is to close the distance.

Who I Am

I work across the whole chain, not one link of it.

I am an agricultural policy and food systems strategist. I have supervised fertilizer logistics at national scale, owned a digital agriculture platform built with IBM, trained smallholder farmers in the field, and evaluated the trade policy that decides whether a harvest ever reaches a market. Economics runs underneath all of it, since governments and institutions hold the levers, and my doctorate lets me meet them on their own terms.

I started in the fields of Kwara State, Nigeria, training smallholder farmers through extension work. I moved through national fertilizer logistics, into agritech product development with OCP Africa and IBM, and then into a doctorate in development economics at the University of East Anglia, studying how aid and trade travel along agricultural corridors.

I hold four degrees across agriculture, global affairs, and economics, formed in Nigeria, the United States, and the United Kingdom, alongside PMP, PMI-ACP, AWS, and executive credentials from Wharton, the World Bank, and the IMF. That range taught me to speak to the farmer and the funder in the same afternoon, in language each one trusts, and that fluency is the whole job.

PhD
Development Economics, University of East Anglia
National
Fertilizer logistics supervised at scale across Nigeria
$16.6M
Bilateral trade initiative independently evaluated
3
Continents of research and practice
10+
Years across the food system, from the field to the policy table
The Work

I have worked the food system at every level it exists.

From the field to the supply chain to the policy table, the same body of work seen from every vantage point.

Field

Agricultural Extension, Kwara State

I began in agricultural extension with the Kwara State Ministry of Agriculture, training hundreds of smallholder farmers through farm visits, field demonstrations, and advisory sessions built for the realities of rural communities. This is where the last mile stopped being an idea and became the work.
Kwara State Ministry of Agriculture
Research

The Aid-for-Trade Paradox

My doctoral research named and evidenced a paradox at the heart of aid policy, building an original dataset from scratch and combining a Theory of Change evaluation with econometric modeling. The finding was that aid can improve a country's export performance while raising its trade costs, with direct implications for how development finance is targeted and measured.
University of East Anglia · 2025
Product

Digital Agriculture Platform

I progressed from Business Analyst to Product Owner on an end-to-end digital agriculture platform built with IBM for OCP Africa, spanning farm inputs, market access, finance, advice, and farm management. I translated the needs of farmers, extension agents, and officials into product requirements, and presented the working prototype to senior government executives.
OCP Africa & IBM · Abuja
Programs

Agribooster Input Initiative

I supported a bundled-input program delivering subsidized seeds, fertilizer, and insecticide to smallholders through one-stop shops staffed with extension agents across northern Nigeria, leading stakeholder engagement with state ministries, cooperatives, and suppliers and reaching thousands of farmers.
OCP Africa · 5+ States
Operations

Presidential Fertilizer Initiative

I supervised a team of ten managing the nationwide transport of urea fertilizer from Port Harcourt to blending plants across the north, running a real-time GPS control room and building incident-response protocols with security agencies and government parastatals under sustained pressure.
TAK Logistics · National
Point of View

What I argue.

The positions my work is built on, applied to the questions food systems are facing right now.

01
The world grows enough. The food dies on the way to market.
Up to half of some harvests are lost after picking, to broken roads, poor storage, and missing cold chains. The crisis lives in delivery, in the stretch between the farm and the market.
02
Aid lifts a nation's exports while the farmer who grew the crop stays poor.
My doctoral research evidenced this paradox along agricultural trade corridors. Development finance is measured at the port and felt least in the field, and closing that gap is the real test of whether aid works.
03
Inputs and extension are the cheapest technology in agriculture, and the most neglected.
Getting the right fertilizer, seed, and advice to a farmer changes more than any single innovation does on its own. Rebuilding that delivery is how a food system turns what it already knows into what farmers actually do.
04
Food security is decided in the last mile, where the institution meets the household.
Everything upstream, the research, the funding, the policy, only matters if it survives the final stretch to the family it was meant for. That stretch is my whole subject.
Areas of Focus

Where my work lives.

01

Agricultural Policy, Trade & Food Systems

The center of everything I do. Fertilizer and input systems, market access and trade, food security, and the policy that shapes them, grounded in what actually happens between the harvest and the household. I work with organizations building, funding, evaluating, or setting policy for agricultural programs and the systems meant to serve them, across Africa and globally.

02

Program Strategy & Evaluation

End-to-end ownership from design through delivery and honest evaluation, built for complex, multi-stakeholder environments where ambiguity is the norm and meticulous execution is the difference.

03

Research & Impact Analysis

Mixed-methods research, econometric modeling, and qualitative fieldwork for institutions that need independent thinking, translated into narratives that move people to act.

04

Digital Agriculture & Applied Technology

Technology built to reach the people it was meant to serve. I shipped an end-to-end digital agriculture platform with IBM covering farm inputs, market access, finance, and advisory services, and I design AI-enabled research and production workflows for food systems work. The test is always the same, whether the tool survives contact with the last mile.

Ideas & Writing

Carrying the last mile into public view.

Making the hidden logic of food systems legible to the people who fund them, build them, and depend on them, through research, writing, and public work on rural livelihoods and the distance between institutions and households.

YouTube · Global Platform

Small Things, Big Meaning

A public education platform translating how the world actually feeds itself, country by country. Tens of thousands of views across more than twenty countries.

Watch on YouTube
Book · 2026

The Woman Who Sold Futures

Nine short stories about women whose intelligence lives outside the places the world is trained to look for it, the kind of sharp mind that goes unnamed and miscounted, working quietly inside lives the systems never thought to measure.

Purchase on Amazon
Book · 2026

The Precious Pearl

A translated and annotated collection of over three hundred classical Arabic aphorisms on character, knowledge, and governance, made accessible to contemporary readers.

Purchase on Amazon
Essays · Medium

Writing on Systems & People

Essays on development, economics, and the human systems that shape how we live, written to earn the reader's time by saying something true and saying it well.

Read on Medium
Recognition & Scholarship

A record across continents.

Fellowships & Awards

  • Summer & Graduate FellowUN Association of the National Capital Area, Washington DC · 2021–2022
  • Global SDG Advocate & PractitionerDistinguished Speaker on SDG 1 & 11, United Kingdom · 2023
  • Johannes M. Botes Capstone Achievement AwardUniversity of Baltimore · 2022
  • Laurence Short Academic Award for International StudentsUnited States · 2021–2022

Selected Publications

  • The Aid-for-Trade Paradox: A Mixed-Methods Evaluation of Trade Costs and Agricultural Export Performance in NigeriaPhD Thesis, University of East Anglia · 2025
  • Book Review: Michalopoulos, Aid, Trade and DevelopmentPolitical Studies Review · 2023
  • Effects of Goat Theft on Women Farmers in Rural Kwara StateBangladesh Journal of Extension Education · 2018

Education & Credentials

  • PhD, Development EconomicsUniversity of East Anglia, UK
  • MA, Global Affairs & Human SecurityUniversity of Baltimore, USA · GPA 3.97
  • MSc, Agricultural ExtensionUniversity of Ilorin, Nigeria · Distinction
  • BSc, Agriculture (Honours)University of Ilorin, Nigeria
  • CertificationsPMP · PMI-ACP · AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner · Practical Application of Generative AI for Project Managers (PMI)
  • Executive TrainingStrategic Management (Wharton) · Macroeconomics of Climate Change (IMF) · Unlocking Investment & Finance in EMDEs (World Bank) · Digital Agriculture (World Bank)
In Partnership

A trusted collaborator in the field.

Prof. S. A. Aderinoye-Abdulwahab

Founder, Aidant Agro-Tech Ltd. · Dept. of Agricultural Extension & Rural Development, University of Ilorin

On agriculture and climate-resilience work, I collaborate with Aidant Agro-Tech, a Nigerian advisory firm founded by my own professor and mentor, the teacher who first taught me agriculture. Her research spans climate-smart agriculture, pastoralism under extreme weather, water allocation, and post-harvest systems. Together we extend that expertise to farms and ranches facing climate risk, from Nigeria to the United States and beyond.

Get In Touch

Let's close the distance.

I welcome conversations about full-time and permanent roles, along with policy, research, evaluation, advisory work, and speaking across food systems, agricultural trade, and rural development. If your work lives in the space between how a system functions and the people it was built to serve, this is the conversation to start.

Rooted in Africa · Based in the United States · Working across global food systems