Updated week of 24 August 2026 · methodology, sources and comparisons
Lokoja Intelligence is the price intelligence layer for Africa's food trade. We price the trade end to end: what a tonne costs across 67 Nigerian markets, what it costs to move, and what the spread nets after transport — verified weekly by ambassadors inside the markets. This page explains exactly how, including the limits.
Three layers, each labelled for what it is:
| Layer | Nature | Cadence | What it contributes |
|---|---|---|---|
| World Bank Real-Time Food Prices | Model-estimated | Monthly | Continuous coverage of all 67 markets, 8 staples, back to 2007. |
| WFP market monitoring | Observed | Monthly (rotating) | Enumerator-collected observations; also our Kenya layer (lokoja.app/ke/). |
| Lokoja field ambassadors | Observed | Weekly | Per-bag prices in trader units with supply levels, diesel & pump prices, a real transport quote, market disruptions and trader counts — from named people inside the markets. |
Model-estimated feeds are useful but unverified. Our ambassadors are the verification: contracted market insiders — today in Dawanau (Kano), Mile 12 (Lagos) and Onitsha Main Market — who file a structured weekly report under a personal-observation declaration. Reports pass automated range and anomaly checks before they touch the engine; fabricated or gamed reports mean clawback and termination under their signed terms. Expansion is ranked by information value: the sell-side and buy-side of the corridors we publish get ambassadors first.
A price without transport is an illusion. Every corridor we publish is quoted net of haulage: a fixed loading cost plus per-tonne-km trucking rates calibrated from working Nigerian transporters, corrected for road circuity, indexed weekly to the national diesel price, with conflict corridors excluded rather than priced as if they were safe. If a spread does not survive the journey, we do not show it.
Every question asked of our WhatsApp assistant becomes a structured, time-stamped record: commodity, location, trade size, language. We sell that — aggregated and anonymised — as what it honestly is: demand signals, the map of who is asking about what, where, this week. Published prices never come from user queries; they come from the observed and modelled layers above, verified in the field. The two datasets are separate by construction.
Our reading of the public offerings, August 2026 — corrections welcome at hello@lokoja.app:
| Recency | Units | Transport costs | Field verification | Access | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lokoja Intelligence | Weekly-stamped | Trader units (50kg/100kg bags, lorry loads) and tonnes | Corridor spreads net of diesel-indexed haulage | Weekly ambassador reports | Free web + free API |
| NBS (official statistics) | Monthly, published with a lag | Metric | — | Enumerator surveys | Free bulletins |
| Tridge | Varies by market | Metric | — | Global network, not Nigeria-market-resident | Enterprise |
| Selina Wamucii | Indicative estimates | Metric | — | — | Free/paid tiers |
| AFEX | Exchange sessions | Contract lots | — | Real transactions (exchange-traded volumes only) | Exchange members + reports |
AFEX's exchange prices are real transactions — the gold standard for the volumes that trade on an exchange. Most of Nigeria's food trade does not: it moves through open markets like Dawanau and Mile 12, which is the trade we price.
Upstream feeds are monthly with roughly a month's lag — our weekly stamps reflect the diesel index, corridor recomputation and ambassador layer, not a weekly re-survey of all 67 markets. The market list skews north-east (53 of 67), a legacy of its monitoring origins; the commercial south is covered via Lagos, Aba and Ibadan plus our ambassador markets. Demand-signal history is weeks deep, not years. We would rather you learn these limits here than in a meeting.
Free to cite with attribution: "Lokoja Intelligence (lokoja.app)", linked. Journalists and researchers: the monthly Lokoja Food Trade Index is built for citation, and bespoke data cuts are free on request — hello@lokoja.app.