Nigeria, Nov. 2 -- "May your road be rough," quipped Tai Solarin in his 1964 piece of the same title. Those words echoed through my mind for Mojeed Alabi and his DevReporting crew as I sat in the midst of the audience last Thursday in UNILAG, but, as Mr Solarin warned, those immortal lines are susceptible to misinterpretation. So, I'd return to them later.

A few years ago, I led a team of journalists on a reporting project on the Nigerian agricultural value chain, with special focus on the key drivers of post-harvest losses amid sky-high food prices. Let me confess upfront that, even as an editor and team lead on several projects, nothing delights me more than travelling to the theatre of reporting with my reporter-colleagues, navigating...