Yet, the region produces only 10% of global output and imports most of the food it consumes. Around 82% of basic food imports still come from outside the continent. By 2021, food insecurity in Africa had risen alarmingly, affecting 794 million people—nearly 60% of its population.

Different factors contribute to this conundrum. Climate change has played a debilitating role, with attendant risks such as the loss of terrestrial, marine, and coastal ecosystems, thereby contributing to food insecurity.

The lack of large-scale industrialisation in the African agricultural sector is well-known, leading to far lower land productivity than the rest of the world. Another challenge is a wide investment gap. While several interventions have come from the African Development Bank (AfDB), the World Bank, and other multilateral institutions, government allocation to agriculture remains wanting. In 2021, the average government expenditure on agriculture in Africa was a meagre 4.1%. Private capital allocation—which is more efficient—also remains low. In the last decade, African agritech startups, per data from Agfunder, raised over $1.8 billion in funding. 

However, the figure pales considerably when placed in perspective with worldwide funding figures. For comparison, African agritech startups in 2022 raised just a little over 2% of the $29.6 billion in total global funding within that sector.
Despite these challenges, there are opportunities for agritech to solve some of these agelong problems with the aid of artificial intelligence (AI) and allied technologies. In an earlier report this year, we noted that Africa’s AI market is projected to reach $6.9bn in 2024, with widespread application across various sectors. We will explore use cases showing how AI can be beneficial.

The case for precision agriculture

A 2020 study on Nigeria’s agricultural sector noted that:

• Ninety percent of agricultural production in Nigeria is the output of inefficient methods and deficient input use by small-scale farmers.

• Nigeria uses 18kg/hectare of inorganic fertiliser, compared to a global average of 100kg/hectare.

• Only 5% of Nigerian farmers use and access seeds of improved varieties compared to 25% in East Africa and 60% in Asia.

• Ten tractors exist for every 100 hectares, compared to Indonesia, which has 241 tractors per 100 hectares.

Another analysis by McKinsey determined that African agriculture had unrealized potential and could produce “two to three times more cereals and grains, which would add 20% more cereals and grains to global output.”

In light of these reasons, precision agriculture, which employs climate-smart solutions using advanced technology and sensor tools to aid crop management decisions and improve crop yield, has become vital. Other uses of AI in agriculture include pest and disease detection, harvesting and sorting, livestock management, and supply chain optimization.

India’s Agricultural Success Story Powered by AI

In 2020, the Indian centre of the World Economic Forum, in partnership with India’s Ministry of Agriculture and the state of Telangana, launched the AI4AI initiative (AI for Agriculture Innovation). Over eight months of workshops with smallholder farmers were organized, educating them on implementing new technologies, including AI, drones, and blockchain. The framework proposed incorporating smart farming and data-driven agriculture to achieve the end goals.

The pilot program was tested among 7,000 chilli farmers for 18 months over three crop cycles. Here are the key findings:

• An important component of this initiative was a WhatsApp chatbot developed in collaboration with an open-source developer. Designed in the local language of the farmers, the chatbot provided farmers with timely prompts in line with the maturity stages of their crops.
• An agritech startup built soil testing centres powered by machine learning technology that provided AI-based quality testing and a digital platform for buyer-seller connections.
• Farmers reported a significant increase in net income: $800 per acre in a single crop cycle (6 months), double the average income. They also significantly reduced wastage, which was as high as 40% before the start of the initiative.
• Digital advisory services contributed to a 21% increase in chilli yield production per acre.
• Pesticide use decreased by 9%, and fertilizers dropped by 5%.
• Quality improvements led to an 8% increase in unit prices.
• The initiative’s success led the state government to increase the number of crops to five and scale it to ten districts covering 500,000 farmers. 

India’s success story, while commendable, is not isolated. In Senegal, there has been research into how combining algorithms with Internet of Things (IoT) detectors can develop sustainable automated irrigation systems. A World Bank study showed promising results from Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Uganda by highlighting how machine learning can help achieve transformational agriculture by optimizing clusters.

Local startups are also buying into these solutions. Nigerian-based agritech Kitovu employs an AI and data-driven agronomic advisory that uses remote sensing to provide insights for reducing input costs, increasing yield, and offering precise inputs and personalised soil and crop health analysis. East Africa-based Grekkon also specializes in AI-powered irrigation and greenhouses that serve tens of thousands of farmers.

Despite the stated benefits of AI, it still carries limitations. According to Adewale Adegoke, CEO of AgroXchange, an agricultural digital platform, the biggest challenge towards implementing precision agriculture remains data accessibility, especially for farmers who may find it tough to stay at pace with constantly emerging data. 

There are also cultural impediments, like convincing farmers steeped in one way of farming to adopt new technologies. Much of the work requires mass education and a strong will to power through on the part of entrepreneurs who are invested in adopting AI at scale. It is, however, no longer a matter of blind faith—we now have ample evidence to show that AI can supercharge Africa towards the next phase of the agricultural revolution.

Isaac Sesi picks up a small bucket of maize to demonstrate the latest iteration of his moisture-measuring device. Powering the device with batteries, he presses a button. A white screen shows the types of grain to select for the test; he selects the maize category and then presses another button to take the reading. Sesi is demonstrating the latest model of the GrainMate moisture meter, his solution to countering food loss in rural farming communities. 

“Moisture content is one of the physical quantities that are essential in determining the quality of your end product, so we have come up with the GrainMate to make it easy to know how much moisture content you have in your product,” Sesi explained.

As a young man from a farming community in the Ashanti region of Ghana, Sesi became familiar with the challenges of storing grain the hard way, witnessing the difficulties his parents and other farmers experienced when trying to store their farm produce. He dedicated his academic career to finding a solution to this food loss. 

His first iteration of the device was completed in 2018. The idea was to help farmers, aggregators, feed producers and anyone in the grain value chain to easily measure moisture content in their grain before storage, feed preparation or processing. 

“One aspect of food security is in the process of being able to reduce or mitigate post-harvest losses because 30 per cent of the food that we produce is lost and if we can cut down on these losses, that will bode well for our food security because the food that is being lost is food that can feed other people,” Sesi shared.

Currently, Sesi Technologies’ GrainMate is less expensive compared to other, imported, moisture meter brands. 

Sesi’s company offers two models. One is for regular grains, which is sold at 800 Ghanaian cedis ( about US$65) while a second model extends to high-value commodities such as shea nuts. That version costs 1000 Ghanaian cedis (about US$83).

Sesi graduated from Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST) and used his final year research project to come up with the GrainMate. 

“In Ghana, with research, you just finish and put it on the shelf so you move on with your life but we thought that we developed something pretty good so we wanted to make it beneficial to farmers so I started Sesi Technologies to commercialise the output of my research at KNUST,” Sesi said. 

The company’s breakthrough came with a sale of 150 of the devices. Since then, Sesi has depended on revenue from sales of moisture metres and other services, while his company has received funding from a range of sources. 

“We started with no money, absolutely no money. We just started by trying to commercialise this technology and how we were able to manufacture our first batch was that we got some pre-orders so we asked the client to pay for 70% so that we could use it to finance the initial inventory,” Sesi shared.

Sesi was determined to reach as many farmers as he could, which pushed him to participate in different start-up support programmes. He emerged as the overall winner of the GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize, an award for African agri-food innovators and entrepreneurs who are developing solutions for the agriculture value chain, in 2019.

“We won the overall US$50,000 prize”. 

This prize helped him to scale both production and human resources. 

“We have about 25 people in our team and that tells you that our wage bill every month is substantial and we’re making progress. We also have our field team who are in charge of providing services that we provide to farmers,” he explained. 

Over 5,000 farmers have now tried out the device, with uptake still slower than he and his team of mostly 20-somethings would like.

“There’s very slow adoption to new technology and so we have not seen the kind of rapid adoption that we are looking at,” he explained.

However, feedback from the current pool of users keeps Sesi and his team motivated.

“For instance, poultry farmers use our device to check the moisture content of the different components of the feed before they put it together. When they do that they tell us that once they know the moisture content they see the quality of the feed is high, productivity is high and their birds don’t suffer from diseases because our device helps them.

“There was a time when the device was not there to check the right moisture for storage, I bagged the maize thinking that they were safe but when I needed them at a point to use them they were all green in the bag and I lost a lot of money,” explained Kofi Korsah, a commercial maize and poultry farmer and one of Sesi Technologies’ clients. 

Joseph Oppong Akowuah, a local professor and expert in post-harvest management who uses the device to educate farmers explained the importance of having young entrepreneurs like Sesi innovate and sell local solutions. 

“It can help farmers move away from the indigenous approach of checking the level of moisture in their produce by using a scientific approach…These are very critical,” he explained.

Akowuah believes the government’s support for entrepreneurs like Sesi under the Planting for Food and Jobs (PFJ), an initiative aimed at increasing production and increasing revenue for farmers, will have a far-reaching impact.

“If we want to get this technology on a wide scale, there must be some kind of policy intervention from the government because I think one of the critical issues has to do with training, exposure, and making farmers aware of some of these technologies,” he advised.

Sesi is optimistic about growth and is eyeing a local manufacturing facility employing skilled engineers to increase production capacity and push mass adoption of the GrainMate device.

“In the end, the goal is to be able to produce and assemble more,” he said. 

Constellr, a German-based satellite data company, is offering land surface temperature (LST) data to African farmers to help them plan for better harvests and face climate change. 

What is LST, and why is it important?

Land surface temperature is a measurement of how hot to the touch the land is, and how safe it is for planting crops over time. An understanding of this data can protect farmers from severe losses and boost food production, Rosa Schmidt, marketing project manager for constellr, told TechCabal in an email.

In farming, temperatures are one of the primary determinants of plant growth and availability of produce. Instability or lack of understanding of the soil’s temperature impacts the outcome for farmers.

As farming depends primarily on rain, LST will become “instrumental in drought monitoring by pinpointing areas experiencing water stress. This early detection empowers farmers to proactively adapt strategies, whether by adjusting planting schedules or opting for drought-resistant crop varieties. Farmers can also promptly detect abnormal temperature patterns indicative of other types of crop stress (e.g., from diseases) and adapt their approaches to ensure healthier and more productive crops,” Schmidt explained.

Africa’s agriculture industry, despite its promise of a bright future, faces challenges such as “unequal access to resources, climate constraints, lacking infrastructure, technologies that are not equipped to handle varying economic and ecological situations, increasingly competitive markets, and low remuneration,” according to consulting firm Morgan Philips.

Constellr is expanding into Africa, starting with Morocco, South Africa, and Zimbabwe.

“With Africa poised for the highest population growth and impact of climate change but also being the continent with the highest potential for a jump in agriculture productivity, this [expansion] holds even greater significance,” Schmidt said. 

Data for everyone

In Africa where a significant percentage of farmers are uneducated, LST data is inaccessible to the average farmer, despite its merits of helping farmers plan their planting and harvest seasons better.

Only 15 out of 54 African countries have launched satellites into space and can gather EO data. Countries like Nigeria and Ghana have used these satellites to aid farming, but the data is usually expensive and hard to obtain. Smallholder farmers who need it the most, can’t access LST data.

As water scarcity concerns continue to stand in the way of achieving $1 trillion in revenue in the African agriculture industry, companies like constellr promise to make the data available and affordable to support a sustainable and more efficient farming ecosystem.

Constellr’s plan to make LST data available to more farmers, according to Schmidt, involves a four-pronged partnership approach with commercial companies, intergovernmental remote sensing institutions, space agencies, and NGOs. By working with the four partners, constellr will share the cost of accessibility across partners so that the end users, farmers, will get it at affordable rates. When asked about their pricing model, Schmidt said the company will provide locally contextualised rates across different countries.

By using local NGOs and intergovernmental institutions, data will be available to farmers in summarised bits over different farming seasons, and may go as far as being read on the radio and in local newspapers to make it more accessible. For a start, Schmidt confirmed that constellr has “a handful of projects and partners in Africa for whom our goal is generating positive environmental and economic impact”. These partners will be their starting point.

South Africans spend a third of their income on food. In 2021 Egyptian families reportedly spent up to 45% of their monthly expenditure on food. In Kenya the figure rises to 46.7%, Cameroonian families spend 45.6%, and in Algeria, food gobbles 42.5% of monthly expenditure. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populated country, 56% of every naira earned is spent on food.

It is an unlikely problem given that Africans are more likely to work on a farm than any other job. In 2020, almost 44% of Africans were employed in the agriculture sector, according to Statista. Other sources put the figure much higher. Despite the agricultural sector providing work for more people than any other sector, 37 African countries (out of 54) face “hunger levels that are ‘Stressed’ or higher,” per the 2022 Global Hunger Index, an annual report from Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe. 

For many decades, the hunger problem negatively defined Africa in Western media. A lot of that negative coverage has been reduced on the back of local and global criticism over the portrayal of Africa as a hungry continent. Fewer Africans are hungry relatively speaking and in absolute terms. However, while the number of people starving has reduced, the number of people who are one shock away from hunger has increased. In the last months of 2022, more than two-thirds (70%) of people most affected by the global food crises lived in just three East African countries—Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. 

Persistent insecurity in Africa’s backyards does more to undermine local and international aid efforts to improve agriculture and deliver help to affected populations, together with drier-than-normal weather the violence forces farmers to allow fertile fields to lie fallow or give up harvests. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a pain African countries could do without. But the bigger effect of the unfortunate war has been a cut in aid from Europe that supported hunger alleviation programs.

Still, local conflict is a more pressing challenge to building up Africa’s fragile agricultural ecosystems. Usually, the people who suffer the most are smallholder farmers in places affected by both a changing climate and violence. They usually depend on the food they produce to feed their families and sell the excess to earn some money. When they cannot go to their farms, everyone suffers.

From a big-picture perspective, things seem to be getting better—marginally and slowly. Farming practices have improved ever so slightly due to land reforms in some African countries. And more modern farming approaches are taking root. Showing that some of the problems facing efforts to provide sufficient food for Africans are more solvable than stopping gunfights. Importantly Africa’s growing class of tech entrepreneurs who typically focus on digital payment technologies are finding the opportunity to solve these problems attractive.

Take ThriveAgric for example, a Nigerian startup that combines financing with market access support for smallholder farmers. In the last 3 years, Thrive Agric has built a network of 500,000 farmers that it supports with financing for farm inputs. The company has also entered partnerships with commodity boards to help it find markets for the farmers they support.

Earlier this year, Thrive Agric announced that it had hit a milestone of $100 million in credit lent to farmers in its network. Thrive Agric is not paid back in cash. It loans against expected crop yield, works with the farmers to improve yield and manage farming operations and sells the harvest to a network of off-takers. Profits are shared with farmers, Oshone Anavhe, Thrive Agric’s VP of operations explained. This creates an interesting model that effectively aggregates smallholder farmers and lends Thrive Agric the scale of a commercial player—albeit with more people employed.

It was not always a smooth ride for Thrive Agric. It originally began life as a crowdfunding platform that funded farmers and split 80% of profits between farmers and subscribers and kept 20% for itself. But Covid-19 pandemic restrictions changed that and almost sank the startup before it managed a turnaround and opted to pursue a model that relied on institutional funding instead of flighty short-term loans from multiple subscribers.

The firm has since raised money from Nigeria’s central and commercial banks, Ventures Platform, the World Food Program, and USAID.

Startups like Thrive Agric may be key to resolving one of the big problems facing agriculture across the continent. Which is that most of Africa’s farms are too small to produce much more than the farmer’s family will eat for the farming season. Aggregating these smallholder farms with technology and input support is one way to derive some of the efficiencies of large farms without actually owning a large farm. 

South Africa, the continent’s leading agricultural producer, is a model of agricultural efficiency for the rest of the continent. It has both the largest agricultural land on the continent—96 million hectares—and the largest concentration of commercial farmers at 32,000. Between 5,000 to 7,000 of these farmers produce four-fifths of the country’s agricultural produce, according to the US International Trade Administration. Agricultural production in South Africa is complemented by a strong agro–processing industry that represents 18% of the manufacturing output of South Africa yearly. Processing raw produce from South African farms is second only to auto-manufacturing in terms of gross value added.

The country’s agricultural sector more than doubled in value and volume since 1994. It is one of the bright spots in South Africa’s economy despite the broader economic woes and even through Covid–19. “At the heart of its progress has been the rising productivity and growing exports. The productivity growth is on the back of technological advancement — biology and mechanical,” an agriculture sector expert, Wandile Sihlobo, told TechCabal. Sihlobo who is a member of the Economic Advisory Council of President Cyril Ramaphosa also doubles as chief economist of the Agricultural Business Chamber of South Africa.

It is not easy to replicate South Africa’s agricultural success without significant changes to local and national land ownership rules in Africa. And the capital required to build a processing industry is not insignificant.

But a key to starting might lie in Thrive Agric’s approach of aggregating smaller farms. In food processing, firms like Releaf are doing the same thing starting with sustainable oil palm in Nigeria. In Kenya and Rwanda, Victory Farms and Kivu Choice are integrating local small farms into their tilapia fish farming operations. And Synnefa in Kenya is providing smart greenhouses for small-scale farmers. Everywhere you look, it seems like there’s an agritech betting on aggregation.

Africa’s food problems will not be solved by food aid in the long term and massive food import bills are weighing heavily on forex reserves. Startup founders that venture into agriculture are taking on a big problem with often hidden nuances that outsiders do not see. Moreover, they still have to deal with infrastructure challenges, security problems, fragmentation, and unfavourable government policies. 

The challenges are tough, but the rewards are significant—for the startups and local economies. If they can aggregate enough of the fragmented agricultural sector. If they can increase productivity using technology and ensure consistency in their aggregated portfolio. Then maybe they could create a new playbook for what is possible—a world where Africa’s smallholder farmers are empowered to produce, process and move food where it is needed the most. Something that government–run programs and food aid have failed to crack.

Last month, Tanzanian biotech startup NovFeed won the Milken-Motsepe prize in agritech’s $1 million grant. NovFeed’s product offering involves the use of biomass to produce fish feed. The feed is cheaper to produce and offers more nutritional value compared to current products in the market, the company claims.

TechCabal spoke to Diana Orembe and Otaigo Elisha, co-founders of the startups, to learn more about the product, their success in the competition, as well as their thoughts on the state of agritech in Africa.

Please tell us more about NovFeed and the problem you are trying to solve through your solution.

Diana Orembe: NovFeed was born back in 2019 with the goal to help to promote sustainable aquaculture by producing alternative protein to replace the unsustainable fish meal and soybean in the aquafeed. The aim of this was to produce an affordable feed that can help the farmers increase their profitability. 

The scale of the problem is in the fact that currently, aquafeed globally is produced by using fish meal. Fish meal is unsustainable but it still accounts for over 70% of production costs as it is mostly exported from Vietnam and Netherlands. So we saw this challenge and we researched it. We then decided to apply science as a tool to help overcome this challenge and find a way to help the farmers.

Our biotechnology solution involves collecting the organic waste that was supposed to end up in the landfills and then using bacteria to turn this organic waste into a renewable protein ingredient with a very high protein profile of around 70% and other valuable and important nutrients. Along the process, we also identified that the byproduct that we had after harvesting the protein ingredient is a liquid biofertilizer with a lot of probiotic bacteria that has huge potential in regenerating the soil and supporting the organic farming of fruits and vegetables. 

What challenges would you say you have faced in trying to scale up the solution?

Otaigo Elisha: To start with, our solution is very novel and has high-tech aspects. This makes accessing the equipment we need to scale to an industrial scale, both in terms of production and research and development, rather expensive. Remember that we are continually trying to discover other products like enzymes and additives which can be produced through the system and that requires constant research and development.

DO: In addition, scaling biotech companies in Africa is also another challenge that we faced because it’s an industry that has not yet grown extensively. So sometimes you need inspiration, mentorship, etc, but that’s not available. Also, talent is also hard to come by too in the form of scientists. Most of these would rather work with established companies than a startup. 

In terms of traction, how much would you say you have attained so far?

DO: We have been able to continue to do R&D and discover a consortium of microbes that can convert this organic waste into protein biomass. Secondly, we have tested the solution on real customers, the farmers and we have collected a lot of metrics in terms of the growth performance, survival rate and in terms of digestibility of the product. Additionally, we have also increased economic value for farmers in terms of reducing cost and also reducing the maturation period of the fish.  We have attracted several other partners that are working with us in different capacities, from coaching to mentorship training and other areas. 

How was your experience with the competition from deciding to enter to eventually winning the $1 million prize money?

OE: The Milken competition runs for almost one year. So we started by submitting our idea on the platform which also has resources to improve it. This also came with the Stanford course that we attended for two weeks. We also got a mentor with a background in biotechnology which was key for us to utilise in developing our business model.

We then made it to the top 25 and submitted the research protocols and proceeded to conduct our field trials. We collected a lot of valuable information from the animal feed manufacturers, farmers, and consumers of fish. Those insights helped us to develop a final report that showed how this type of alternative feed helped farmers cut costs, increase the performance at the farm level in terms of the fish growth rate, and also in terms of cutting the maturation period from eight to seven or six months. 

Once we were done in that phase, we submitted all the documents plus the data that we collected and other information that helped the judges to decide the top five and eventually the grand prize. 

What will you use the $1 million prize money for?

OE: We are planning to use the prize money to pilot NovFeed and make sure that we are producing the final product at a bigger capacity so that we can reach more farmers and increase our impact across Tanzania and beyond. But also, we plan on investing in continuous R&D so that we can continue to improve the efficiency of our product and also innovate new products. 

DO: We also plan on using the prize money to build out our own lab. So far, we have been utilising the university lab for the production of the biomass and also trialling it. In that way, we can greatly accelerate our turnaround time.

What role do you think biotech innovations like NovFeed’s can play in growing agriculture in Africa?

DO: Speaking on a broader scale, agriculture in Africa employs a significant portion of the population. For example, in Tanzania, it employs almost 70% of the population. We see currently that the same sector is facing a lot of challenges including climate change. Technology gives us a big opportunity to address those challenges, ensuring that farmers are more productive, and hence key contributors to national food security. 

OE: On top of that, biotech will revolutionise the way we produce and feed our growing population. With climate change which is affecting everything from the way we produce our food, to the seeds, to the soil that we grow crops on, we need to apply science in order to come up with new ways of producing. We need science to come up with new seeds, we need science to come up with new fields, and we need science to come up with new methods to produce more food by using fewer resources. We need to support biotech startups so that by 2050, we’ll be able to feed our nine billion population.

Is there anything else you would like to add about NovFeed?

OE: We invite development partners to work with us in different capacities, including expertise, market linkage. and other areas we may need support. 

DO: Additionally, we also would like to use this opportunity to encourage all the Africans who are planning or have any idea about biotech to turn it into a business. It may seem hard in the beginning but we also started from zero and here we are with such a prestigious award.

Interview has been edited for length and clarity.

FarmTrace prides itself on being the premier cloud-based farm management solution that offers a wide range of tools to assist farmers scale and manage their operations. Its platform integrates production activities in a way that allows for remote oversight of farm operations. FarmTrace claims its solutions can increase efficiency in farms and consequently boost yield.

Founded by Jacques du Plessis and Werner Lategan in 2015, FarmTrace bootstrapped its way into relevance for its first three years of operation, before landing its $1m investment in 2018.  Speaking on the recent raise, Lategan, who functions as the startup’s COO, said, “With this capital, FarmTrace will bring about the next wave of farming cost savings, yield, and efficiency improvements. We will serve more farms, more products, and more geographies and ensure that we can help farms grow sustainably and profitably.”

Secha Capital’s managing director, Brendan Mullen, expressed confidence in FarmTrace’s model, maintaining that the solution was designed to solve the core pain points of farmers. “We’ve met with many agritech companies that treated agriculture as a homogenous sector and were not built with the farmer in mind. The FarmTrace team knows the key pain points in farming operations and developed a solution to solve them,” he said.

Howard Saffy, managing director at Hassium Capital was also effusive about the FarmTrace team. “The team has done an amazing job in building a highly satisfied client base across a variety of horticulture crops,” he said. “They have worked hand-in-hand with farmers to develop solutions to meet their exact needs. We are excited to be able to support them on the journey and look forward to being part of the growth here in South Africa and beyond.”

According to FarmTrace, the investment will help them scale their products and enable farmers to improve their operations profitably. This will further unlock growth in Africa’s agribusiness sector by providing local jobs, reducing food wastage, and optimising farm operations.

FarmTrace is playing in a market in dire need of intervention. Africa’s food market continues to experience a surge in food prices, arising from disruptions in supply, high cost of farm inputs, and currency fluctuations. Despite the market’s projection to be worth a trillion dollars by the end of this decade, most farms in Africa are operated by uneducated smallholder farmers with sub-optimal practices and high food wastage. Incorporating a tech-powered management solution such as FarmTrace’s could provide a much-needed boon for farm operations in Africa. 

The cost of food in Africa is unlike that on any other continent. According to the IMF, on average, Africans spend almost half of their income on food. For context, the estimate is 17% in more advanced economies. It has not always been like this. In recent years, the price of food has been steadily rising as a result of different factors, including but not limited to a heavy reliance on imported food, local currency devaluation, higher costs of fertilisers, and natural disasters.

Between 2020 and 2022, the price of a food basket increased by 8.5%, while the price of staple foods surged by 23.9%. In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the average price of food has increased by over 65% in just 3 years. As expected, restaurants have felt the crunch of this food inflation.

Eating out is a big part of Nigerian culture, as evidenced by the fact that Nigerians spend 20% of their income on eating out. The United States Department of Agriculture estimates that Nigeria’s food service industry—restaurants, hotels, bars, and cafes—is worth over $7 billion, with the fast food sector growing at a 25% annual rate. 

However, as inflation soars to new heights and Nigerians’ purchasing power declines, restaurants are operating with tighter margins. Despite the industry’s enormous potential, many businesses face challenges such as expensive and unreliable supply, limited access to data to guide procurement decisions, theft and wastage, and restricted access to capital to finance procurement.

Not only do restaurants struggle to keep up with the ever-increasing prices, but they also face data and supply problems. Vendease, a Nigerian company, is solving these challenges for the food service industry in Nigeria and Ghana. The startup has built a “food operating system” that allows restaurants to place orders for food supplies and track them, manage inventory, track expenses, ensure correct pricing, and gain access to credit facilities.

One of the first issues that Vendease helped solve was the issue of delivery time. On a call with TechCabal, Tunde Kara, the CEO of Vendease, said that his company knew how important same-day delivery was to restaurants and so set up their infrastructure to harness anonymised data from the onset. 

“We used daily behaviours on the platform and the ordering patterns to help us predict what they need and what they might need even before they place an order. A couple of months later, we took over logistics and warehousing responsibilities, and this allowed us to use the data we have on buying patterns to plan delivery routes for our biggest order hotspots around the cities. We also use this data to plan fulfilment centres for the most congested areas on our platform. This drastically shortened the delivery time,” Kara explained. 

Fulfilment centres come with a lot of headaches. Last year, large retailers like Amazon and Walmart struggled with too much of the wrong inventory. Even though they used data to plan, they had too many things that customers didn’t need. When asked if Vendease had ever faced this problem, Kara said, “Yes, we’ve had that problem, but it’s a problem that we’ve figured out to a large extent.” He added that because Vendease had over 3,000 food service businesses on its platform, it was unavoidable. 

Both sides of the coin

Vendease also essentially runs a double-sided marketplace by procuring for the farmers and manufacturers that they buy from. According to Kara, the company has invested in automating food supply by offering services to the primary (farmers), secondary (manufacturers), and tertiary (restaurants) sectors of the food industry. 

Kara shared that Vendease serves the primary sector by helping them drop their costs and become more efficient. He explained that the company helps farmers source and import fertilisers and feed and provides them with offtake agreements and anything else that is essential for production. “By doing this, we can get better pricing because of the commitment from the start and economies of scale. We can then control the prices for the entire chain of production. The cheaper it costs to produce, the cheaper it is for us to sell to the end user.”

Last year, Vendease raised $30 million in Series A funding, structured as a $20 million equity round and a $10 million debt round. At the time, Kara told TechCabal that the debt round would be used for Vendease’s trade finance product, where the company would lend money to its customers. He explained that the company acts as a bridge between its customers and financial partners. “The customers apply through us, and based on their buying history and payback period, they can get buy-now-pay-later options in stock and not loans.” He added that the company has plans to get financial licenses to improve the way the product works. 

Opposite sides of a compass

Vendease is not alone in using technology to solve Africa’s food problems. Last year, Stable Foods raised $600,000 to help Kenyan farmers increase their output. The company offers a host of solutions to these farmers, such as input and offtake contracts, training on best practices for regenerative agriculture, and an irrigation-as-a-service (IaaS) product. Their IaaS product could not have come at a better time, as East Africa is struggling with the effects of a drought that has affected over 36 million people.

It is too early to say whether the efforts of these companies can have a lasting impact on Africa’s food crisis, but the early signs are promising. As of last year, Vendease had moved more than 400,000 metric tonnes of food through its platform, helping its users save more than $2 million in procurement costs and more than 10,000 procurement man-hours. Africa is still in the throes of exorbitant food prices; however, tech-enabled companies like Vendease and Stable Foods are working to create a future where this is no longer the case. A lasting solution will not come easily, but the future holds promise.

When Ikenna Nzewi and Uzoma Ayogu, Americans of Nigerian descent, started Releaf in 2017, they had a mission to improve Africa’s food security while building a successful agritech company. This mission pushed them into Y Combinator, a global accelerator programme that helps promising startups with funding, network, and business model advice. But after graduating from YC, Releaf’s business model was not clear to most, as their offerings varied from an aggregator marketplace for agricultural produce to trade finance solutions.

Eventually, the startup’s founders found their way to Nigeria, their country of origin and the largest producer of oil palm in Africa. Compelled to find solutions to key problems in Nigeria’s agriculture and food processing sector, Nzewi and Ayogu toured 20 out of Nigeria’s 36 states, seeking gaps Releaf could fill with technology and optimised practices. They finally found their gold spot: Nigeria’s under-optimised $3 billion oil palm industry, which was producing at a demand deficit of about 60%

“We took a much more broad approach to what the solution would be, but we really wanted to decide on a specific crop to work in. And we found that opportunity in the oil palm sector,” Nzewi said to TechCrunch in an interview two years ago.

Over four million smallholder farmers in Nigeria drive 80% of the production of oil palm in Nigeria’s fragmented market. These farmers are mostly faced with two major problems: They are unable to transport their harvested produce to distant processing factories, and they lack modern equipment to efficiently process it themselves. This is where Releaf comes in, providing a chain of well-equipped processing factories that farmers can easily access. Releaf buys the nuts from the farmers, uses its proprietary deshelling technology, Kraken, to process the nuts at high efficiency (85% more than the industry standard), then sells the processed oil to manufacturers and FMCG processors. 

Releaf turned heads in 2021 when it raised $4.2 million in its seed round: $2.7 million from investors and  $1.5 million in grants. Then, Nzewi said the funds would be used to develop technology and deploy financing for smallholder farmers in Nigeria. According to a statement sent to TechCabal, this new raise will support the launch of two key technologies for Releaf—Kraken II and SITE.

Kraken II is a mobile and lower-cost version of Releaf’s Kraken. The company claims Kraken II functions as efficiently as its static predecessor, with the advantage of easy transportation to high-density farming areas.

“Kraken II is going to be a game changer for us. With portable de-shellers, we can multiply the number of farmers we work with, and even offer them better prices because we’d have saved money from logistics,” co-founder Nzewi said to me over a call.

SITE, on the other hand, is a geospatial mapping application that decodes the most profitable positioning for farms and agro–processing plants. SITE was developed in collaboration with Stanford University’s Professor David Lobell, a MacArthur Fellow, and director of the Centre on Food Security and the Environment, whose team refined the age identification process for oil palm trees in Nigeria.

According to Nzewi, Releaf built SITE as an internal software for positioning Kraken factories—after some consulted geospatial mapping companies failed to provide them with the depth of analysis they needed. “We decided to build it ourselves,” he said. ”After all, we operated in these markets and had the right skills match. Although we presently use SITE at Releaf to tell us where next to go, we are building SITE as a crop-agnostic product.”

Releaf believes the combination of Kraken II and SITE will enable it—and other startups that plug in—to target optimal opportunities across Nigeria’s oil palm belt rather than being limited to sourcing crops within 100 kilometers of a fixed processing site

“SITE and Kraken II are the next steps in our plan to fundamentally transform the efficiency of agricultural supply chains in Africa and we are excited to have partnered with an exceptional cohort of investors and collaborators to roll out these technologies. To make food supply chains profitable, we must maximise extraction yields with leading processing technology and minimise logistics costs by bringing processing capacity closer to farmers,” Ayogu, Releaf’s co-founder, said in the statement.

“Before Releaf, stakeholders had to choose between one or the other. Large factories had great technology but were far away, leaving most farmers with rudimentary technology to process their crops. We’re now able to maximise both,” he added.

The $3.3 million funding round was led by returning investor Samurai Incubate Africa, with participation from Consonance Investment Managers, Stephen Pagliuca (chairman of Bain Capital) and Jeff Ubben (board member at World Wildlife Fund and founder of Inclusive Capital Partners). 

Rena Yoneyama, managing partner at Samurai Incubate Africa, expressed excitement to continue investing in Releaf’s ambitious plans, maintaining positivity in the market success of Kraken II and SITE.

“Releaf’s success with its pilot Kraken validates its thesis, and we are excited to continue supporting their ambitious vision to create efficient supply chains within Africa’s agricultural market. They have added key members to their management team and continue to impress us with their rapid commercial growth and technological development. We look forward to more of the same success as the team rolls out Kraken II and SITE.”

Stanford University’s Professor David Lobell contributed:  “I enjoyed working with Releaf and using our tree height algorithm to establish the correlation between oil palm age and height to help farmers to get a better understanding of their future yields and make better data-driven decisions on sustainable replanting. There is a great opportunity to unlock Africa’s unique agricultural potential by leveraging remote sensing solutions, and I believe this partnership will be a catalyst.”

Africa will represent 40% of the human population by the end of the 21st century, and the FMCG  market will emerge as one of its globally relevant industries. Releaf is positioning itself as a catalyst for this industrialisation while ensuring inclusive success for agricultural stakeholders continent-wide.

Over the next few years, Releaf plans to build its own refinery for oil palm. With a refinery, the startup can process vegetable oil fit for direct consumption. “When we achieve this,“ Nzewi tells me, “We can 10X our revenue and sell to a much wider market while benefitting from huge economies of scale.”

29-year-old Clement Kandodo still has very vivid memories of his farmer parents’ support for a family of 5 children. Kandodo himself spent many happy days in the fields with his father and mother and to this day holds his parents up as role models. 

“My father was a successful farmer in our community, earning the moniker ‘lead farmer.’ This made me proud as a child because I would brag about my father’s success wherever I went, and I was regarded as a hero among my peers,” Kandodo recalled.

Growing up and being involved in farming, Kandodo, realized at a young age however that ‘not all that glitters is gold,’ as there were significant challenges to his parents’ success.

“I realized my father was having difficulty obtaining fertiliser.” It was very costly for him. “He would sometimes sell some of the livestock to buy the fertiliser bags,” Kandodo explained.

Kandodo credits his current course in life with a desire to find solutions to those challenges. Setting his heart on attending the Bunda College of Agriculture (now part of the Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources, or LUANAR), his wish was granted in 2012 when he was accepted to study agronomy (majoring in crop and soil science). 

“Studying agronomy was like completing the puzzle. Just as I was yearning for low-cost farming methods, one of the lecturers brought up a topic about how to make organic fertiliser and cooking gas from waste, during one of my classes. This was a huge inspiration for my career,” Kandodo explained.

His interest in agriculture, environmental conservation, and concerns over youth unemployment figures drove Kandodo—now a YALI fellow—to launch his own company, EcoGen, shortly after graduating in 2016.

Situated in Lilongwe’s Falls Estate, EcoGen specializes in providing biogas technology that allows people to convert available food waste, animal waste, or farm waste into fertiliser, cooking gas, pesticides, and animal feed. The backyard of the office premises is used as a demonstration site, displaying how the technology works, starting with the digester and a garden of different crops.

EcoGen touts its technology both as a solution to Malawi’s waste management problem as well as a solution to deforestation.

Biogas technology employs biodigesters, which function as bins into which all organic waste is disposed of and which is then “digested” (in a process known as aerobic digestion). Fertiliser and cooking gas are produced as a result of the process.

Kandodo has dubbed the ‘waste’ from this process ‘brown gold,’ as it is a very efficient fertiliser. He is overjoyed that the technology allows him to kill more than two birds with one stone.

“I am ecstatic about this technology. Even in the backyard, this system can be installed. The digester consumes food scraps or livestock waste. So, while it can produce cheaper organic fertilizer, it is also the most efficient way to manage waste.”

According to the United Nations Development Programme, Malawi faces a number of waste management challenges, with city councils managing on average only 12% of the waste created in their areas, with private waste collectors filling the void. Poor coordination among waste generators (households and institutions), waste collectors, and recyclers makes the problem worse.

According to the country’s 2017–2027 Charcoal Strategy, more than 97% of Malawian households rely on illegal and unsustainable sourced biomass (charcoal and firewood) for domestic cooking and heating energy. 

“Another significant advantage of using this technology is gas production. It is an answer to women like my mother who used to walk long distances in search of firewood, because once this technology is installed, that household will be able to not rely on charcoal or firewood for cooking but gas—and in the process they are no longer walking long distances to fetch firewood or spending more on charcoal, thereby preserving trees,” Kandodo said.

EcoGen’s target population is diverse and includes farmers, households, and organizations such as hospitals and schools.

The company has won awards for assisting farmers like Yohane Chawoloka of Malawi’s central region district of Dedza. His family now cooks with gas and uses bio fertilizer instead of chemical fertilizer, which he makes from chicken, cow, and pig waste.

Chawoloka cultivates maize, beans, groundnuts, potatoes, and cassava, but he also produces milk and has livestock. To Chawoloka, organic waste has become a source of multiple solutions to the problems he faces as a farmer. 

“I am sorry because I have been discarding waste for over 30 years, allowing it to decay in the air and pollute the environment. But after hearing about this technology from EcoGen, I knew I had to have it installed in my backyard,” Chawoloka said.

“I am now saving a lot of money because I now use organic fertiliser that I harvest from the biogas technology,” he continued. 

The Dedza-based farmer would previously use 16–17 bags of chemical fertiliser for his crops, spending over K400,000 (U$390) on a 4-acre plot of land. Now he spends almost nothing on fertilizer and his yield has actually increased. Producing organic fertiliser may look like a filthy task, but Chaoloka’s facial expression tells you otherwise; he appears to be in love with what he is doing.

“You can check it out for yourself. I anticipate having over 200 (50 kg) bags of maize. Furthermore, I am no longer spending the 1,000 kwacha I was spending on firewood every day because my wife now cooks with gas,” he explained.

The biogas system is long-lasting and Kandodo explained that the EcoGen system comes with a ten-year warranty and a life span of more than 20 years. It costs K987 500 (US$987) with the option of paying in installments for up to 2 years. 

“In Malawi, people typically spend 20,000 to 30,000 kwacha per month on cooking, and the majority of people spend 120,000 to 150,000 kwacha on fertiliser. So, having our technology means that one will be able to save enough to pay for the system while saving millions of kwachas in subsequent years. Our premise is that once you have our technology, you will begin saving money and, as you save, you will be repaying until you finish. As a result, the technology will become more affordable,” Kandodo explained.

EcoGen is one of only a few companies in Malawi promoting organic fertiliser and the use of biogas for cooking. While other African countries like Nigeria, South Africa and Algeria have inorganic fertiliser manufacturing plants, Malawi is yet to have one – yet the country uses over 500,000 metric tonnes of inorganic fertiliser annually on commercial and subsistence farms. 

Malawi’s Ministry of Agriculture spokesperson Gracian Lungu said that farmers are encouraged to produce organic fertiliser, which farmers complement with the inorganic fertiliser to maximise their production, pointing to deficiencies in a purely organic option.

“The nitrogen percentage doesn’t reach the needed 23% in basal dressing and 46% in top dressing. The most benefits one gets from organic manure is that they are cheap and they restore soil fertility,” he said.

While Malawi’s government is doing feasibility studies for the viability of a fertiliser manufacturing plant, the government is pledging support for viable innovations.

The country’s National Energy Policy of 2018 has prioritised biogas and the government has supported a number of biogas projects – and is also promoting the use of biogas at institutions such as schools, hospitals and prisons.

“The government is promoting using technologies that are clean, modern, affordable and efficient. These include mini-grids and large-scale power plants.” Ministry of energy’s Public Relations Officer Upile Kamoto-Lali said.

Wellam Kamthunzi, a lecturer in agricultural engineering at LUANAR, believes biogas technology to be both economical and environmentally friendly.

“By using animal waste to produce biogas, you do not lose the fertiliser value, but you improve the fertilizer value while gaining energy in the form of natural gas for cooking and even running engines,” he explained.

Kamthunzi suggested that cities, municipalities and towns use digesters for waste management and that large livestock producers be encouraged to produce biogas from livestock waste. 

“All organic waste that ends up in landfills—like those run by the cities of Lilongwe and Blantyre—can be used to produce biogas,” he said.

EcoGen has installed over 60 systems, with a goal of installing over 10,000 biogas systems by 2026 to provide more people with access to clean cooking, waste management, and sustainable farming. 

Digital-savvy farmers in Africa are tapping social media platforms to network, learn and find new buyers for their products, outside traditional markets, according to a report.

More farmers in Kenya are sidestepping middlemen and using Meta platforms to take their fresh tomatoes, avocados, kale and other products straight to consumers’ doorsteps.

Research firm Caribou Digital’s latest report found that farmers are also getting information about best farming practices from their peers, through shared online video tutorials.

Dubbed Social Agriculture: young farmers, social media, and the digital transformation of agriculture, further shows there are more people using Facebook for agriculture than all dedicated agricultural platforms in Kenya.

These include Facebook groups like Digital Farmers of Kenya and the Young Farmers Forum, on WhatsApp.

“Based on an industry-standard estimate that 22.5% of 33 million registered users are active, digital agriculture platforms have an estimated active user base of approximately 7.5 million in Kenya; Wefarm, a popular digital agriculture platform, had 1.4 million users in 2018,” reads the Mastercard Foundation-sponsored report, in part. 

“Facebook advertising indicates that the number of users interested in agriculture is estimated to be 9.3 million. In other words, despite any concerted marketing efforts, the number of people using social media platforms for agriculture in Kenya is higher than the total active users of dedicated digital agricultural platforms.” 

Growth in social agriculture in Kenya comes amid rapid smartphone adoption, reliable internet connection and mobile payments services that have made e-commerce vibrant in that market.

In 2020, mobile phone penetration among adults in Kenya was 98 per cent and according to the Communications Authority of Kenya’s (CA) sector statistic report for the quarter ending September 2021, 59 million mobile phone devices were connected to mobile networks in the country.

Of that number, 33 million were feature phones while 26 million were smartphones, putting the penetration levels at  67.9% and 53.4% respectively.

As of 2020, 43% of all adults were using the internet (96% of them on smartphones rather than computers) and 17% of all adults were using social media (98% of them on smartphones).

It is hardly surprising, then, that farmers are turning to social media to find new markets for their produce, which includes supplying to hotels and supermarkets.

Caribou’s report notes that digital platforms are also grooming would-be entrepreneurs who are turning to agriculture to earn a living. “Social agriculture” has lowered the barriers to gaining expertise and helped online communities of farmers develop new avenues of monetization – including through online influence.

“Influencers who promote social agriculture frame agriculture as a livelihood relevant to the digitally connected and introduce agriculture to people who might not otherwise consider an agricultural livelihood,” the report notes.

“The increased visibility of agriculture is important because it makes farming more attractive to people who might not be able to access white collar jobs and brings people with the education and digital literacy required to translate agriculture innovation into practice.”

Caribou says their findings in Kenya point to the growth potential of social agriculture in Africa.

“It has a strong payments infrastructure, which has enabled some of the e-commerce applications common in China. Many Facebook agriculture groups that are now pan-African began in Kenya,” it said.

“Social agriculture” also appears to address some gender imbalances by offering opportunities to women agriculturalists, just as it does for men.