How Stakeholders In the Agritech Industry Should Face the New Normal
The Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing disruption in the global
supply chain, consumer price inflation, as well as the new health and security policies, have created a lot of market frictions and opportunities for
stakeholders in the agritech industry.
The pandemic came with a lot of epiphanies and eye-opening
experiences suggesting how businesses and the future global economy will be
shaped by more than digital ingenuity. There is also a need to avoid culture
lag by enhancing a corresponding adjustment in culture and attitude towards
work. Hence, Stakeholders in Africa’s agritech industry are expected to seek
the broader perspective in navigating barriers and exploring opportunities in the
new normal.
According to a recent McKinsey report on how leaders
can adapt to a very different future, five action points are suggested for well-meaning entrepreneurs and business leaders in the post-covid-19 economy. First
is that they need to center their strategies on sustainability; secondly, they
need to develop a capacity to transform in the cloud; thirdly, they need to increase
investment targeted towards improving their talents and human resource strength;
fourthly, they need to prioritize speed in adapting to the fluidity and fickleness
of the modern business climate; and lastly, they must consistently go about
their operations with the central purpose in the mind.
The foregoing recommendations corroborate our position
that for entrepreneurs and business leaders in the Nigerian agritech sector to
excel in the new economy, they need to critically adjust their business models
to accommodate the new reality, institute structures and cultures that are
resilient to sudden disruptions and increase investment targeted towards improving
their public image.
We analyzed 10 agritech companies in Nigeria using the
degree of reflection of elements such as people, profit, portfolio,
profit-oriented, and organization-inclined in the companies’ value statements as
a parameter for sustainability. Our analysis revealed some surprising results. We
discovered that due to misalignment between their vision and mission statements
most of these start-ups are having internal, structural and strategy, problems and finding it
difficult to cope with external shocks like a sudden pandemic, food price
inflation, and change in government policies.
Our article on the
early failure signals of Nigerian agritech companies gives broader insights.