I almost didn’t know how to describe the evening when I sat down to write this.
On Friday, May 22, our team was invited to a diplomatic reception hosted by the Deputy High Commission of Canada in Lagos, held in honour of the visiting Canadian Secretary of State for International Development, the Honourable Randeep Sarai. It was the kind of room where the right conversation at the right moment can change the trajectory of a company. We walked in prepared. We walked out with momentum we are still processing.
A Minister Who Said the Quiet Part Out Loud
When Minister Sarai took the floor to speak, he did not deliver the usual diplomatic pleasantries. He made declarations.
He announced a fresh $30 million Canadian development funding package specifically targeting West Africa, structured around small business expansion, climate resilience, and youth skills development. He talked about the shift in global economic gravity, naming Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra in the same breath as London, New York, and Toronto. And then he said something that stopped me mid-note: Canada is actively looking for “partners they can rely on, partners that show up and follow through.”
I looked across the room at Oluwaseyi Idowu, our Director of Farm Operations. We both knew: that was us.
The Conversation We Did Not Expect to Have That Evening
When we got the opportunity to speak directly with Minister Sarai, we shared Idomit Agro’s story, our dual identity as a Brampton, Ontario-headquartered company driving large-scale agricultural infrastructure back home in Nigeria. We talked about our work towards integrating cocoa and palm oil estates, our cross-border approach to agricultural education, and our vision for a dedicated premium cocoa export corridor into the Canadian market.
His response was more personal than we anticipated.
He spoke about Oluwaseyi, how he had relocated from Canada back to Nigeria, not to extract from the country, but to build within it. Running farm operations on the ground. Getting his hands in the soil. The Minister called it refreshing. He said it was exactly the kind of story Canada needed to hear more of: professionals choosing to return capital and expertise to rebuild the domestic economy rather than pursue a one-way migration.
We were not expecting that kind of affirmation from a government minister. But it mattered. It confirmed something we talk about internally but rarely say publicly: Idomit is not just a business. It is a philosophy about what African professionals owe to the continent they came from.
A Room Full of the Right People
The reception was three hours long. We used every minute.
We found ourselves in conversation with a programme specialist from UNICEF Nigeria whose mandate, youth empowerment and skills development, aligns almost precisely with what we are building in our eastern operations. The interest was genuine; not polite, but operational. That conversation is continuing.
We reconnected with academic leadership from a Lagos-based polytechnic, building on earlier discussions about structured investment opportunities for institutional staff, a model where professional groups can invest in managed agro-estates and benefit from both the land’s capital appreciation and the annual harvest yield. They left asking for a full executive pitch.
We spoke with a senior figure in diplomatic security who also moves in Lagos’s most connected private-sector circles, and received a personal invitation to bring the Idomit leadership into that network.
And quietly, without fanfare, we opened a long-term media channel with a BBC News correspondent. She was clear, BBC covers outcomes, not ambitions. That is exactly how it should be. When our field projects hit their milestones and those rural communities begin to transform, we will have a credible international press relationship ready to tell that story.
What Comes Next
There is a reason I am writing this publicly rather than just filing it away in an internal report. Momentum is a real thing.
The 6th Canada-Nigeria Business Conference, organised by the Toronto-based Canada-Africa Chamber of Business, takes place in Lagos on June 24 and 25. A room full of senior Canadian agrifood corporations and equipment manufacturers, coming here. We intend to be there.
But beyond the calendar, something shifted on Friday evening. We walked into a room representing a company that most people in that space had never heard of. We walked out having personally briefed a minister, opened channels with international development bodies, and planted Idomit’s name in some of the most consequential conversations happening across the Nigerian-Canadian corridor right now.
Idomit Agro is not waiting to be discovered. We are showing up, in the right rooms, with the right story, at the right time.
I am Eniola Odunuga, and I represent Idomit Agro Corp on the ground in Nigeria. If anything in this piece resonates with you, whether you are a buyer, a development partner, an investor, or simply someone who believes in what well-run African agribusiness can do, I would love to hear from you. Reach us at hello@idomitagro.com or visit idomitagro.com to learn more about what we are building.
