Our approach
How we turn scattered market prices into something everyone can use.
The idea is a plain one. A trained reporter visits the same markets each week, asks the price of the same everyday things, records it with care, and we publish all of it. Here is how that works, step by step.
The basket
We follow a fixed list of the everyday essentials a household buys: grains and staples, tubers, cooking oils, vegetables, protein, a few packaged goods, and petrol. The list holds steady from week to week, so every movement in the numbers reflects the market itself.
Each item is priced in a clear, defined unit: a mudu of rice, a litre of palm oil, a crate of thirty eggs. Where a trader quotes another measure, the reporter converts it with a known local rate, so each figure carries the same meaning across markets and weeks.
How prices are collected
Who. Each city has one reporter, often an economics, statistics, or agriculture student at a local university, trained on the basket, the units, and the signs worth flagging.
Where. A small set of reference markets in each city, chosen to represent it, and visited week after week so the figures stay comparable over time.
When. Once a week, on or around the same day, so every price belongs to a clearly dated week.
What. For each item, the going retail price in its defined unit, recorded first-hand at the stall.
Keeping it honest
Errors happen: a price typed ten times too high, a stray unit, a mislabelled grade. We flag each one and set it aside from the averages, while keeping it in the raw record, marked, so anyone can see exactly what we set aside and why.
This openness is the heart of the project. We report the prices as we find them, publish the method beside them, and leave the conclusions to the reader. What we offer is a record, kept in good faith.
One number, when you want one
Sometimes a single figure helps. For that we publish the PriceMap Index: a weighted summary where staples and energy carry more weight than treats and condiments, set to 100 at a starting point so the change reads at a glance. Beneath it sits every individual price, each one open for you to inspect.
The full, exact methodology, including how each average and the Index are calculated, lives on the platform. Read the detailed methodology (coming soon).
What is coming
The live weekly tracker is being built now. Today the platform runs on a demonstration dataset so you can see exactly how the finished thing will look and feel. Real weekly prices from markets across Nigeria are coming soon, and the network of reporters and cities will grow over time.