The market woman looked at me as though I had personally offended her when I asked the price of tomatoes.
“Madam, how much are these?”
She told me the price, and for a moment, I wondered if I had heard correctly.
I laughed nervously.
She didn’t.
I checked my purse, looked at the tomatoes again and quietly began reducing the quantity I wanted to buy. By the time I had bought tomatoes, pepper, onions and a few other essentials, my money had almost disappeared. I had not even started thinking about rice, cooking oil or yam.
I checked my purse, looked at the tomatoes again and quietly began reducing the quantity I wanted to buy. By the time I had bought tomatoes, pepper, onions and a few other essentials, my money had almost disappeared. I had not even started thinking about rice, cooking oil or yam.
On my way home, one question followed me: How did buying food become such an expensive adventure?
Meanwhile, somewhere in the world of technology, artificial intelligence was learning to write essays, create pictures, answer difficult questions and perform tasks that once required human effort. People were celebrating machines that could think, predict and generate ideas.
But here in Nigeria, many families were still standing in markets, calculating how to make a small amount of money feed an entire household.
So I wondered: if AI is truly intelligent, can it help us solve the problem of expensive food?
The answer might be yes, but not in the way some technology enthusiasts imagine.
Nigeria has farmers who understand the land, traders who understand the market and consumers who understand the pain of rising prices. Yet, between the farm and the dining table, several things go wrong.
A farmer may produce a good harvest only to discover that transporting it to the city costs almost as much as producing it. Another may lose tomatoes because there is no proper storage facility. Some farmers struggle to predict rainfall, identify crop diseases early or know which markets offer better prices.
By the time the produce reaches consumers, the cost has increased, and the people who need affordable food are left paying more.
This is where AI could make a difference.
Imagine a tomato farmer in Kaduna receiving reliable weather predictions on a simple mobile phone. With better information, the farmer could make more informed decisions about planting, watering and harvesting.
Imagine an AI-powered application that helps farmers identify diseases affecting their crops before an entire harvest is destroyed. Imagine technology connecting farmers directly with buyers, reducing unnecessary middlemen and helping produce reach consumers faster.
Consider the amount of food that gets wasted because of poor storage and transportation. Intelligent systems could help monitor storage conditions, predict demand and identify more efficient delivery routes.
Even ordinary consumers could benefit from platforms that compare food prices across markets, helping families make better purchasing decisions.
Suddenly, AI is no longer just a machine generating beautiful pictures or writing impressive sentences. It becomes something that could help put food on people’s tables.
However, there is another side to this exciting possibility.
AI cannot repair a bad road. It cannot chase insecurity away from farming communities. It cannot provide electricity where there is none, and it cannot magically build storage facilities for farmers who cannot afford them.
What happens when the farmer who needs this technology most cannot afford a smartphone? What happens when an application is available only in English, while the person using it understands Hausa or another local language better?
Technology that excludes the people it is supposed to help is not progress; it is simply another expensive invention.
This is why Nigeria must approach agricultural technology with practical thinking. AI should complement investment in roads, electricity, irrigation, security, storage facilities and agricultural education. Its tools must be affordable, accessible and designed around the realities of local farmers.
We should also remember that technology is only as useful as the information and systems supporting it. Incorrect market data or unreliable predictions could create more problems instead of solving existing ones.
Perhaps the real question is not whether AI can make food cheap overnight. It is whether we are ready to use it intelligently to reduce the problems that make food unnecessarily expensive.
I imagine a future where a farmer spends less time worrying about unpredictable weather because useful information is readily available. A trader loses less produce because storage has improved. A transporter saves money through better route planning. And a mother walks into a market with enough money to buy what she needs without having to negotiate with her calculator.
That would be genuine innovation.
We do not need AI to pound our yam. We have people who can do that perfectly well. What we need is technology that helps the farmer grow it, the transporter move it, the trader preserve it and the consumer afford it.
Until that happens, AI can write a thousand essays about food security, generate a million pictures of delicious meals and even design a perfect plate of pounded yam.
But none of that will fill an empty cooking pot.
Perhaps the greatest test of artificial intelligence is not how cleverly it can imitate human thinking, but how meaningfully it can improve human living.