Agriculture in many parts of Africa is largely held back by a prevalent lack of innovative development and improved farm practices. A larger percentage of farmers in several African countries rely on crude tools, outdated techniques, and poor materials; all of which have negative effects on productivity.
With the emergence of various companies that leverage innovative technology and digital solutions, there is a positive shift towards improving agriculture in Africa.
This article presents an overview of 8 startups leveraging technology to solve Agricultural problems and improve food security in Africa.
Apollo Agriculture
Year Founded: 2016
Location: Nairobi, Kenya
Apollo Agriculture is a generalist AgTech solutions provider on a mission to improve agricultural productivity, food security, and the livelihood of farmers in Kenya. The company provides a suite of services targeted at small-scale farmers and nascent agricultural setups in the country.
Apollo’s service coverage includes everything a farmer needs from financing to farm inputs, educated advice, insurance, and market access.
Apollo is particularly invested in connecting farmers who can’t access technology with the resources they need to achieve better results in their businesses. The company’s digital solutions feature an app, a web-based platform, and an outreach program for engaging farmers.
A notable feature of Apollo Agriculture’s platform is its use of satellite data, and agronomic machine learning to facilitate credit assessments and automate operations to keep costs low and processes scalable.
EzyAgric – Akorion Company Limited
Year Founded: 2015
Location: Kampala, Uganda
EzyAgric is a portfolio company of Akorion Company Limited launched to digitize the Ugandan agricultural value chain. The company is focused on improving the production, marketing, and financial performance of farmers and agribusinesses in the country.
In line with its value-chain digitization goal, the company has launched the EzyAgric app, a proprietary web app, and an online community for agricultural produce merchants. These digital products give farmers access to end-to-end solutions which includes planning, inputs, productions, market linkage, and profitability tracking.
An interesting aspect of EzyAgric’s solutions is how they digitally profile farmers and their farm plots and use the information to curate optimal and affordable agro services to meet the specific needs of the farmers.
Releaf
Year Founded: 2017
Location: Uyo, Nigeria
Smallholder farmers across Nigeria regularly deal with logistics issues and often have to travel great distances to get their products to the nearest processor. This initial hitch creates a series of problems down the line as farmers’ crops can go bad in the process and factories may not be willing to purchase them. Even when they do, it will affect their processing yields and price.
Releaf is a supply chain technology company tackling these issues by deploying proprietary software and hardware solutions to facilitate quick and easy transportation of Agricultural products from farms to factories.
Releaf’s primary focus is on industrializing food processing in Africa and they deploy all necessary resources into achieving this. One of the primary routes they take to achieve this is by facilitating goods movement from smallholder farms to factories.
Other services Releaf offers farmers include
- Helping them access finances and capital to scale their agribusiness.
- Providing extension services for smallholder farms,
- Off-taking farmers’ produce, and processing the raw material into factory-grade inputs for factories.
HomeFarm
Year Founded: 2016
Location: Johannesburg, South Africa
Homefarm is a South African company revolutionizing home gardening by developing smart crop-growing appliances and technological solutions that are intuitive and easy to use for everybody.
Homefarm designs and manufactures premium indoor gardening systems. The company’s IoT-powered hydroponic growing system uses soil-less pods that rely on nutrient solutions for supporting plant growth.
Homefarm aims to improve food security and healthy living in Africa by providing solutions that allow regular people to produce their foods in incredibly safe environments and with very little effort.
Wami Agro Limited
Year Founded: 2019
Location: Accra, Ghana
Wami Agro is a Ghanaian startup deploying tech-enabled solutions to promote food security, improve farmers’ quality of life and protect the environment. The company aims to address the challenges African smallholder farmers encounter with the use of IT.
The company is pro-sustainability and employs environmentally friendly practices such as precision farming to facilitate financial inclusion, improve farmers’ well-being, and contribute to climate conservation while promoting food security in the country.
Plug’n’Grow
Year Founded: 2019
Location: Cairo, Egypt
Plug’n’grow is focused on tackling the critical issues of food security and water scarcity arising from desertification, urbanization, and climate change in Egypt and the rest of North Africa. The company develops economic agricultural solutions that specifically cater to North Africa’s geographic, economic, and climate needs using proven hydroponics and aquaculture technology.
At the growers’ level, Plug’n’grow designs solutions to enable farmers to achieve the highest output capacities per meter, while incurring the lowest possible production expenditure. The company’s goal is to give its clients an economic advantage by providing solutions that allow them to achieve more with less.
AgriPredict
Year Founded: 2016
Location: Lusaka, Zambia
Zambia-based AgriPredict is helping farmers make better decisions by making premium information readily available and accessible. The company operates on the belief that lack of access to timely information poses a threat to farmers’ yield in rural areas. And, they have deployed a solution to address this problem.
The company’s innovative solution features web and mobile-based platforms where farmers can get premium advice, recommendations, and actionable insights for their businesses. For example, when farmers are dealing with pests, they only need to take a picture of the affected plants and put it on the platform. The software uses machine learning algorithms to run a diagnosis and suggest potential treatment options.
ThriveAgric
Year Founded: 2016
Location: Abuja, Nigeria
ThriveAgric is a fast-growing Nigerian startup helping farmers increase their yields and profit through a consolidated digital solutions platform. The company’s digital solution which they dubbed the “Agricultural Operating System” is designed to be a one-stop place for farmers to access a wide variety of services to improve their productivity.
Part of the services offered by ThriveAgric involves farmer data collection and farm mapping. They use the information gathered through these avenues to determine the farmer’s creditworthiness. By analyzing the farmer’s creditworthiness, the company can accurately determine how much a farmer should receive and then provide agricultural inputs equivalent to that value.
