As Nigeria continues to grapple with food price volatility, rising household costs, and the need for more responsive food security interventions, ArketData, a Nigerian food price intelligence platform, is providing businesses, households, policymakers, and development stakeholders with access to verified, timely market information to support better decision-making.

Accessible via www.arketdata.com, ArketData provides verified food price intelligence across Nigerian markets, helping users see what commodities actually cost, compare prices across locations, and identify market changes before making purchasing, procurement, or policy decisions. The platform currently provides live market intelligence across 24 major markets and 17 states, while remaining accessible to users nationwide. 

The platform’s relevance extends beyond helping consumers save money at the market. For government agencies and policymakers, timely food price intelligence can provide an additional layer of evidence for understanding regional price movements, identifying unusual price disparities, monitoring market conditions, and designing interventions that respond more closely to what is happening on the ground.

For international development and humanitarian organisations working around food security, nutrition, livelihoods and market access, including organisations such as the World Food Programme (WFP) and the World Health Organization (WHO), granular and timely market information can also help strengthen situational awareness and inform programmes that depend on understanding the affordability and availability of essential food commodities.

From market information to actionable intelligence

ArketData’s proposition is built around three principles: accuracy, trust and timeliness. The platform’s data collection methodology involves physical market audits and market intelligence collection, with prices collected every 48 hours to capture market movements. Data is subsequently cleaned and verified before publication, while local market measurements such as painter and mudu are retained to reflect the realities of different trading environments. 

That approach is designed to address a longstanding challenge in Nigeria’s food economy: information asymmetry.

When buyers do not know what a commodity costs in another market, they may have little leverage to negotiate or identify cheaper alternatives. Businesses can similarly make procurement decisions without sufficient visibility into regional price differences.

Founder of ArketData, Chike Obimma, described the problem as one of information as much as supply and demand. “ArketData is designed to be the digital leverage that shines a light on that opacity.” 

The platform’s objective, he explained, is to give people access to information that enables them to challenge assumptions about where and when to buy.

“At the heart of strategic decision making are numbers. We want people to stop guessing. We want them to check the data, make better decisions, and change the way they shop and live.” 

AI that knows when not to guess

A key part of ArketData’s evolving technology proposition is ArketAI, an AI-powered conversational assistant designed to answer food-price questions using the platform’s verified market intelligence.

Unlike generic AI systems that may generate plausible-sounding answers, ArketAI is designed to work within the boundaries of ArketData’s verified data. The platform states that it does not estimate, fabricate, or fill gaps when a price is unavailable; instead, it tells users when the requested information is outside its current coverage. 

That distinction is particularly important for a food-price intelligence platform, where an inaccurate number can influence household spending, business procurement, or the interpretation of market conditions.

ArketData’s website also provides a Price Explorer, market comparisons, price alerts, historical price information, and a community feature where users can share questions and observations about market prices. These tools are designed to move users from simply finding prices to understanding market movements and acting on them. 

Giving businesses a better view of procurement

For businesses, particularly food manufacturers, restaurants, caterers, hospitality operators, retailers, agricultural traders and procurement teams, price intelligence can directly influence sourcing and margins.

ArketData’s Compare Prices feature allows users to compare commodities across markets, while its market intelligence can reveal regional differences that may otherwise remain hidden.

Chike cited examples where assumptions about the cheapest market did not always match the data, including instances where some commodities were cheaper in Mushin than Mile 12, while certain fish products could be cheaper in Ajah. 

According to him, for businesses operating on tight margins, the implication is straightforward: knowing where and when prices move can become a procurement advantage.

Why policymakers should care

For policymakers, the value of ArketData lies in its potential to make food price information more granular, visible and actionable. Rather than relying solely on periodic or aggregated indicators, market-level intelligence can help decision-makers observe differences between locations and commodities and identify where affordability pressures may be emerging.

This can potentially support:

  • Food inflation monitoring and market surveillance. 
  • Early identification of unusual price movements across commodities and locations. 
  • Evidence-based policy design around food affordability and market interventions. 
  • Regional comparison of commodity prices. 
  • Food-security and livelihood programmes that require current market information. 
  • Public-sector and institutional procurement decisions. 
  • Assessment of interventions by comparing market conditions over time. 
  • Better targeting of support where price pressures are most pronounced. 

ArketData’s longer-term roadmap is to deepen its market footprint across Nigeria, with the ambition of covering at least 10 major markets in every state and building a database spanning approximately 360 to 400 markets. The stated objective is to create greater market transparency and encourage more efficient allocation of resources. 

Chike said the platform’s independence is central to its credibility as a source of market intelligence. “It pays us, the government, and the country as a whole that ArketData remains completely independent. That way, the government can rely on our information for policy direction, the people can rely on it to budget, and everyone knows the data is free from external influence.”

Making food price intelligence accessible

ArketData is available free to users and provides access to food price information, market comparisons and other tools designed to make market intelligence easier to access.  The platform currently tracks commodities including rice, beans, garri, yam, maize, tomatoes, onions, fish, poultry and other food categories, with market-level information available across its current coverage footprint. 

Its community function further opens a channel for people to exchange observations about prices and market conditions, creating another layer of market visibility alongside the platform’s verified data. 

For Chike, the broader ambition is to build trust around the use of data in everyday economic decisions. “In the next five to ten years, when people think of ArketData, we want them to think of trust and integrity without equivocation.” 

As Nigeria seeks more effective ways to address food affordability, inflation and food security pressures, ArketData is positioning food price intelligence not simply as a consumer convenience, but as a potential decision support layer connecting households, businesses, markets and policymakers.