From Commodity to Capital: Exploring the Potential of Commodity RWA Finance for African Agriculture
Updated: Sep 28
Can Real-World Assets help connect commodity supply, trade finance and agricultural development?
Sometimes, when I look at a commodity transaction, I find myself thinking beyond the cargo.
Where does the commodity go?
Who needs it?
What happens after it arrives?
And perhaps the most important question: What is stopping the transaction from happening?
Sometimes the answer is not supply.
Sometimes it is finance.
This is something I have been thinking about through my work with agricultural fertilisers, particularly Urea 46N and African markets.
A buyer may need fertiliser.
A supplier may be able to provide it.
The physical commodity may exist.
The demand may be genuine.
But between the supplier and the buyer sits another critical requirement: How do we finance the transaction?
This is where I have started exploring the potential connection between commodities, Real-World Assets (RWA) and finance.
Not as a finished model.
Not as a promise.
But as a question worth exploring.
From Fertiliser to Food Security
My interest in this idea started with commodities.
I have been working with Urea 46N and have written about its relationship with agriculture and food security.
Fertiliser is not food.
It does not solve food insecurity on its own.
But it is one of the agricultural inputs that can support crop production when it is appropriate for the crop, applied correctly and available at the right time.
And availability is not only about whether a product exists.
It is also about access.
A farmer cannot benefit from fertiliser sitting in a warehouse thousands of kilometres away.
The supply chain needs to connect the product with the farmer.
That requires procurement, financing, transportation, storage, distribution, agronomic knowledge and markets.
The World Bank has documented the limited use of formal credit to finance modern agricultural inputs among smallholders in several Sub-Saharan African countries, while FAO and its partners have highlighted the wider financing gap affecting African agrifood systems.
This made me think: Could finance be designed around the physical commodity and the transaction itself?
What Does RWA Have to Do With Commodities?
Real-World Assets are increasingly discussed in the context of the digital economy.
At its simplest, the idea is to connect something that exists in the physical world with a digital or financial representation.
Real estate.
Treasury assets.
Invoices.
Receivables.
Commodities.
For me, the interesting question is not: “Can we tokenise a commodity?”
The more important question is: “Can we use the underlying real-world asset to create a better financing structure?”
That is a very different proposition.
I am particularly interested in the possibility of applying this thinking to physical commodity transactions.
For example, imagine a fertiliser shipment.
There is:
A verified supplier
A defined quantity of fertiliser
A verified buyer
A purchase agreement / offtake
A shipment
.A receivable or repayment obligation
A financing structure
The physical commodity remains at the centre.
The financial structure is built around the transaction.
Why Africa?
My interest in Africa comes directly from my experience with fertiliser transactions with Alice Stambuli. She explained to me that Africa's food security challenge is not simply a question of agricultural production. It is also a question of infrastructure, affordability, access to inputs, financing, logistics, markets and resilience.
(You may also be interested in reading: Food Security Is National Security: Can Fertiliser Help Africa Move Towards UN SDG 2?)
FAO's 2026 Africa regional overview says the continent remains off track to achieve SDG 2, while its latest work on financing agrifood systems highlights the need for substantially greater and better-coordinated financing.
At the same time, the United Nations' SDG 2 framework goes beyond simply reducing hunger.
Target 2.3 calls for improved productivity and incomes of small-scale food producers, including access to productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services and markets.
Target 2.4 calls for sustainable food production systems and resilient agricultural practices.
That is important.
Because if we think about SDG 2 only as: “How do we provide more food?”
we may miss the bigger question: “How do we build agricultural systems capable of producing and accessing food sustainably over time?”
Finance is one part of that system.
Could the Commodity Become Part of the Financing Structure?
This is the part I am exploring.
Imagine a transaction where a defined quantity of fertiliser is being purchased for an identified agricultural market.
Instead of looking at the financing requirement in isolation, we could potentially look at the entire transaction:
verified supplier → purchase agreement → logistics → delivery → buyer / offtake → receivable → repayment
The commodity and its associated contractual rights could potentially form part of a structured financing arrangement, subject of course to applicable law, regulation, due diligence and the precise structure.
This is not a new idea in principle.
Structured commodity finance has long considered the borrower as part of a commodity supply chain rather than looking only at the borrower's standalone credit profile. UNCTAD has discussed supply-chain-based commodity finance as a way of connecting financing to the performance of the underlying commodity chain.
What interests me is whether new digital infrastructure and RWA structures could make some of these relationships more transparent, efficient or accessible.
That is the part I want to explore.
I Am Not Thinking About a Public Token
When people hear “RWA”, they sometimes immediately think about launching a token.
That is not necessarily what I have in mind.
For a physical commodity transaction, I am more interested in the underlying commercial structure first.
For example, a transaction could potentially be organised through an SPV, with clearly defined:
underlying commodity
supplier
buyer
purchase contract
financing arrangement
logistics
insurance
documentation
payment flows
risk controls
repayment mechanism
A digital layer could potentially provide additional transparency or recordkeeping where appropriate.
But the technology should serve the transaction.
Not the other way around.
That distinction is important to me.
From Fertiliser Finance to Agricultural Development
If this model were ever developed successfully, I would not want the purpose to stop at financing one shipment.
The bigger question is: Can better commodity finance contribute to a more resilient agricultural system?
For example, financing could potentially support access to:
Seeds
Agricultural inputs
Storage
Irrigation
Processing
Logistics
Agricultural equipment
Local distribution infrastructure
The objective would not simply be to move more commodities.
It would be to help create the conditions in which agricultural production can become more reliable and productive.
This is closely aligned with the broader intent of SDG 2, which includes not only food access, but agricultural productivity, small-scale producer incomes, productive inputs, financial services, markets and resilient agriculture.
Where JCG Could Potentially Fit
This is where my thinking about JCG's three pillars starts to connect.
JCG already works around physical commodities, including agricultural fertilisers.
Food security, agricultural resilience and responsible resource use are part of the sustainability conversation.
RWA, digital finance and new financial infrastructure are part of how I see the future of capital and trade developing.
The potential connection looks something like this:
Strategic Commodity
Real-World Asset
Trade / Supply Chain
Financing
Agricultural Production
Food Security
UN Sustainable Development Goal 2 - Zero Hunger
This is still an idea I am exploring.
But I find the connection compelling enough to investigate further.
The Hard Part Is Not the Technology
One thing I have learned from commodity trading is that the difficult part is rarely just finding a product.
The same applies here.
Creating a digital representation of an asset is one thing.
Creating a credible, enforceable and commercially viable transaction is another.
They are commodity, legal, financial and risk-management questions.
And that is why I believe experience in the physical commodity transaction still matters in an RWA world.
Could This Help Bridge Two Worlds?
This is what excites me most about the idea.
Two worlds often operate separately.
One is the world of physical commodities:
Factories. Warehouses. Ships. Ports. Fertilisers. Farmers. Agricultural supply chains.
The other is the world of capital and digital finance:
Investors. Structured finance. Digital assets. RWA.Financing platforms. Data. Settlement.
Could we build better connections between these two worlds?
Perhaps.
But the connection needs to begin with a real economic purpose.
For me, African agriculture and food security provide that purpose.
The Goal Is Bigger Than One Shipment
When I first started working with Urea 46N, I was focused on the transaction.
A buyer. A seller. A quantity. A price. A shipment.
Over time, I started seeing the bigger picture.
Behind the shipment is a farmer.
Behind the farmer is a harvest.
Behind the harvest is food.
And behind food is the resilience of communities and economies.
That is why I don't see Commodity RWA Finance simply as another financial innovation.
If explored responsibly, it could potentially become another tool for connecting capital with real economic activity.
And ultimately:
Can it contribute, even in a small way, to the objectives of UN SDG 2 - Zero Hunger?
From Commodity to Capital
I am still exploring this idea.
There is much more to understand — from legal and regulatory structures to investor protection, commodity verification, financing mechanisms, digital infrastructure and the realities of African agricultural markets.
For JCG, the question I am exploring is: Can we connect physical commodities, innovative finance and agricultural development in a way that creates real economic value?
If the answer is yes, the opportunity may be much bigger than financing a shipment.
It could be about building a bridge between commodities and capital.
Between trade and finance.
Between African agriculture and investment.
And ultimately, between today's supply chain and tomorrow's food security.
Because SDG 2 is not only about feeding people today. It is about building the systems, productivity, resilience and access needed to feed people tomorrow.
That is the opportunity I want to explore.
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