Babban Gona: Great Farm

In 2020, Babban Gona was one of the world’s largest farming operations with over 140,000 acres of maize farms, an area over ten times as large as Manhattan, and over 80,000 member-farmers in Nigeria. According to the company, the average Nigerian farmer’s net income per hectare was $176, while the average Babban Gona member’s net income was $518. A key part of Babban Gona’s value-proposition was combating the proliferation of militant organizations by offering young Nigerians a viable livelihood as agricultural entrepreneurs. But pressing questions still loomed large about whether or not and just how the firm should expand. Both co-founders, Kola Masha and his wife Lola, were determined to scale an economically viable enterprise that was not entirely reliant on impact capital. Still, they would need some of that capital in order to make expansion a reality. Did their business model have the right features to scale up and thrive even in the long run? Would their pitch to impact investors and beyond be convincing enough to raise the capital they needed to meet their goal of reaching one million Nigerian farmers by 2025?