Dual Realty Ltd, a real estate company, aims to help alleviate Nigeria’s food security crisis through innovative investments.
According to Chief Operating Officer Festus-Tomiwa Oyelakin, the company has launched a scheme where they invest in large-scale farming on behalf of customers, providing annual interest on the investment.
This initiative comes as Nigeria faces food insecurity due to climate change and eco-violence, with the UN warning that 80-82 million Nigerians may suffer severe food insecurity by 2030.
To address this, Dual Realty has opened an estate in Ibadan, offering affordable land sales while also facilitating agricultural investments.
The company farms on the land and shares the proceeds with the owners, utilizing the land in their Springfield Estate for this purpose.
“It is a form of Land banking in which people buy land that has potential development; they buy the land at a low cost and sell the land at a higher price after some years when the area would have been more developed. All the area would have been more developed. But instead of just leaving the land fallow, we help our buyers farm on the land.
“When Real Estate companies sell land in undeveloped areas, they just leave the land empty until development comes to that community after many years. But these properties can be put to better use like agriculture.
“So we are contributing to reducing the food crisis and hunger in Nigeria; at the same time, the land owners get returns while their property value also increases. We take care of all the agricultural processes – weed clearing, seedling, farming, harvesting, etc. At the end of the farming season, they get between 10 per cent to 25 per cent return on investment,” Oyelakin explained.
He also revealed that the company employed farmers to plant cassava, maize, tomatoes, plantain, and timber, among other crops, which would be sold in the Nigerian market.
“Our customers not only own a land, they also earn; and collectively, we are contributing to efforts to reduce hunger and food insecurity in Nigeria,” he stated .
