Adetunji Abayomi, RISE - Young Innovators Nigeria 2023

The Rice Inventory Storage and Exchange (or RISE for short) is a commodity storage system that issues electronic receipts to people storing their goods on the premises. These receipts can then be traded between farmers or buyers and later redeemed when taking goods out of storage.

This is all in an effort to support farmers in their post-harvest stage by giving them access to storage facilities and harvest protection products, such as Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) storage bags and chemicals like Actellic Super. In the future, RISE also hopes to provide farmers with access to short-term loans and create opportunities for smallholder farmers to store their paddy for a longer time before selling, thus generating maximum revenue on their produce.

Our journey through the Innovate UK training and mentorship programmes brought so much clarity and focus to our idea, it validated that we have a good concept and has also equipped us with the knowledge and tools to pursue it with greater confidence.

– Adetunji Abayomi, RISE

About Adetunji Abayomi

Adetunji Abayomi, Co-founder of RISE system spec; has built a career dedicated to finding solutions to food security challenges, thereby making food available affordable and accessible. His desire to make food available led him to co-found RISE with Bayo Ayodele. RISE, which is a scalable agri-warehousing solution, is aimed to facilitate exchange between farmers and processors, as well as strengthen the rice value chain, which can revolutionize the rice sector.

Before RISE, Yomi also co-founded Crystal Gold Agro Allied Ltd, an SME which also drives his primary vision, to feed nations, through food processing and agro-consultancy services. He has worked extensively within the rice value chain as a processor, and a consultant for small-scale processors and worked with farmers and farmer communities on different rice production projects. He is a First Degree Holder in Anatomy and has received Agribusiness management and rice breeding training at Africa Rice Center, Saint-Louis, Senegal.

Recently, Yomi and his Co-founder on RISE won the second prize at the Innovate UK young innovators pitch contest, where he also received business growth training with EDC and Wennovation. All these validate that he is on the right path to feeding nations.  He is committed to learning and personal development to drive better and more scalable solutions to food security challenges.

About Global Alliance Africa

Global Alliance Africa is a six-year project funded by UK International Development through Innovate UK (GCRF) and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO).

Follow us for more project updates

Twitter @IUK_Global

Instagram @WeAreGlobalAlliance

Webpage ktn-uk.org/programme/africa