Can Diaspora Demand Help Feed Africa? A Grocer’s Case for a Trade Bridge

By Bashir Azeez

Sub-Saharan Africa spends tens of billions of dollars a year importing food. Bashir Azeez, who sells African food in Maryland and is building a farm-tech platform, thinks part of the answer lies in connecting the two ends of the chain.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reported that food imports in sub-Saharan Africa were worth about US$62.8 billion in 2024 and forecast US$65 billion for 2025. That is a large sum for a region with abundant farmland and a large farming workforce.

There is no single explanation, and no single fix. But Bashir Azeez, a Nigerian-born entrepreneur based in Maryland, has built his career at both ends of one supply chain, and he believes some of the gap is a problem of connection.

Three missing links

Azeez describes the gap in terms a trader would recognise.

Demand that cannot find supply. About 2.5 million sub-Saharan African immigrants lived in the United States in 2024, according to the Migration Policy Institute, more than three times the number in 2000, with Nigeria among the largest origin countries. Many of those households want foods from home. Azeez runs Abartfoods, an online and in-store African grocery in Beltsville and Wheaton, Maryland, which he took over in 2017, and he sees that demand daily.

Supply that cannot see the price. At the other end of the chain, a farmer may have no way to compare what a crop is fetching in other markets. Azeez’s agritech venture, Baagrilink, is aimed at that gap and at three related ones: access to finance, access to markets and post-harvest loss.

Finance that does not reach the farm. The African Development Bank has said that farmers in Africa could need between US$27 billion and US$65 billion a year in loans to produce enough food to curb imports, citing several studies. A weak credit record is part of the obstacle. Without records of what a farm plants and sells, lenders have little to assess.

What Baagrilink is trying

Baagrilink is still at the planning and prototype stage, with Azeez building relationships among farmers while the platform is tested ahead of launch. Its working pieces include a listing board that puts farmers in direct contact with buyers, a tool for tracking farm and livestock activity from planting to sale, and a soil kit that checks eight parameters and passes the results to an AI agronomist for interpretation.

The design maps onto the three links: listings connect demand and supply, records give lenders something to read, and visible activity begins to make prices visible.

An honest limit

It would be wrong to suggest that diaspora grocery sales could close an import bill measured in tens of billions of dollars. They cannot. A grocery in Maryland is a small data point in a very large trade flow.

The argument is narrower. Retail shows what buyers want, and a platform can show what farmers have. Linking the two does not replace imports on its own, but it can improve how supply and demand find each other, and that is a precondition for anything larger.

The evidence will have to come from execution. Baagrilink has not yet published results, and Azeez says his next milestone is bringing in investors. Investors and journalists will rightly ask how many farmers use the platform, how prices and losses change for them, and what it costs to serve each one.

A habit of structure

Azeez’s own history frames his caution. He once ran a clothing import business in Nigeria that closed within about a year, after the naira lost value. “First lesson is to put structure in place regardless of what you do, there will be theft where there is no structure,” he says, adding that technology should come early. Baagrilink’s records-first design is consistent with that view.

The trade bridge

Azeez calls his goal building the trade bridge between Africa and the world. A bridge needs both banks and a way across. He has spent years on one bank, as a grocer, and is now trying to build the other. Whether the span holds will be decided by what happens after launch.