AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited, Nigeria’s first private sector commodities exchange firm, is today introducing the first ever learning platform for Nigeria’s commodities market. The Exchange has named this initiative EdEX and is kicking off activities under the new initiative with a training for journalists and media personnel tagged Trading Stories.
Top on the Exchange’s reasons for introducing this novel initiative are the myriad of wealth creation opportunities along the commodities value chain being harnessed by only a few investors due to limited understanding of the structure and operations of the market.
With inclusion and innovation at the center of today’s commodity markets, investors can find several routes to participate in the market, provided that they are suitably educated and informed about the opportunities present in trading and investing in commodities.
EdEX, being AFEX’s education platform, furnishes the need for answers to the education gap in Nigeria’s commodities market. It is designed to accommodate both online trainings and digitally distributed learning materials as well as physical workshops, which will enable AFEX to reach various audience groups and satisfy their unique education needs.
The platform will prove especially valuable for three key groups of participants – institutional and retail investors, brokers and smallholder farmers. Content available on the platform for institutional & retail investors, as well as brokers, span across membership procedure, market access, trading strategies and community engagement.
For smallholder farmers, a train the trainer model aimed at effective and efficient knowledge dissemination to smallholder farmers on various farm processes and beneficial practices is adopted. Ahead of the official launch of the platform in the third quarter of the year, a one-day training workshop was organized for journalists and media personnel in Nigeria.
Trading Stories which held on the 18th of June 2019 in Lagos was the first off-shoot of EdEX serving as a platform for media and commodity experts to meet and exchange ideas about the growing commodities market in Nigeria. EdEX aligns with the Security and Exchange Commission’s focus on investor protection and education, and is a strategic investment by AFEX, which will grow into an open source library for exchanges in Africa.
According to AFEX’s Country Manager, Ayodeji Balogun, “EdEX is a market education platform designed to help portfolio managers, fund managers, analysts, traders, brokers and risk managers gain an understanding of the commodities markets in Nigeria, and develop products and services around the commodities exchange ecosystem.”
AFEX’s education platform will make the structure and functions of Nigeria’s commodity market accessible knowledge; handing the knowledge needed to navigate today’s commodities markets to anyone desirous of an entry point to trading commodities. It will ensure that market participants are educated on the operations of the exchange, products and services available and other essential information that can lead to an increase in income for everyone involved.
AFEX Commodities Exchange Limited (AFEX Nigeria) is Nigeria’s first private sector commodity exchange firm. The company was established in 2014 under the aegis of Africa Exchange Holdings Ltd., a limited liability company with principal investors Berggruen Holdings, LLC, Heirs Holdings, LLC, and 50 Ventures, LLC.
Since inception, AFEX Nigeria has made great strides in reaching small holder farmers and providing solutions for problems in the country’s agricultural sector through such services as the deployment of storage services, the provision of electronic warehouse receipts, and the facilitation of input financing.
AFEX Nigeria has since reached and enhanced the livelihoods of over 100, 000 farmers and aggregated over 100, 000 metric tons of grain with the organization’s overarching strategy of creating a national trading platform and supply chain network in carefully identified value chains through which farmers and commodity merchants can access commodity and financial markets.
