African Agtech Market Map: 99 Technologies Changing the

Future of Agriculture in Africa

FEBRUARY 14, 2018 | LINA BELMAACHI

Editor’s Note: Lina Belmaachi is cofounder of The Seed Project, a non-profit think tank. The team spent time on-
the-ground in Africa in order to do a diagnosis and identify pain points across the agricultural value chain before
heading to worldwide innovation hubs to meet with start-ups and select the solutions best adapted to African
specificities. Their goal is to contribute to the African agricultural progress towards a system with optimized re-
source allocation through technology. Here Belmaachi organizes 99 African Agrifood technologies.

There are seven billion people on the planet and more than one-quarter of them suffer from malnutri-
tion, mostly in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. By 2050, the global population is expected to reach 9
billion people and the number of under-nourished children to increase by 25 million. We are now facing
one of the biggest challenges of this century – how can we feed all these mouths?

Innovative solutions need to be implemented and technology and information sharing can help produce
enough food and correctly distribute it around the planet.

The African continent has huge potential with 60% of world’s non-cultivated arable lands but still
spends $25 billion annually on food imports. Africa could play a major role and take on future food chal-
lenges, yet it needs to leapfrog the innovation gap with other continents to produce enough food for its
own population and work toward becoming a food exporter.

Even though African farmers are attached to their traditions and quite reluctant to change, they are not
immune to the technology revolution. Just like in the banking industry, where mobile money technolo-
gies have become pervasive regardless of the quasi-inexistent banking system, agriculture must follow
suit.

Coming back to the basics of agriculture, farmers essentially have four main access challenges:
 Financing & Insurance
Resources (inputs, equipment, labour)
Knowledge & know-how (business and agronomic)
Market (logistics, commercialization, transformation)

A representative and non-exhaustive selection of these companies have been visualized in this African
Agtech market map, into nine categories by AgFunder and The Seed Project.

Click to Enlarge

Financial Services
Financial services are not intuitively linked to agriculture, but they have a crucial role to play for African
farmers. Smallholder farmers are seen as high-risk profile clients, dependent on climate, and with no col-
lateral. This, combined with the lack of credit and risk-scoring capabilities, turns loan and insurance ap-
plication processes into real hurdles for farmers. Different types of financial solutions are thus arising,
such as:

Micro-banking, with Oradian (Nigeria)

Micro-insurance, with Mobbisurance (South Africa)
Transaction services, with M-Pesa (Kenya)
Data analytics for risk scoring with Acre Africa (Kenya) and credit scoring with Farm Drive (Kenya)

Ag Biotech Inputs
Farmers are using inputs (seeds, fertilizers and pesticides) that are environmental detractors and not
suited for their lands given their underdeveloped agronomic knowledge. There is room for start-ups to
use advances in biotechnology such as plant breeding, gene editing, biologicals or microbiome research
in order to propose more sustainable and efficient input solutions.

Wanda Organic is a Kenyan start-up providing organic bio-fertilizers to small and medium-sized farmers
in order to improve their soil health and yields. Clients can order products by sending a simple SMS with
their phone. Another company, InteliSeed from South Africa, partnered with Syngenta to provide farm-
ers with optimized seeds that can offer them an butter output and quality for their crops. They are fo-
cused on vegetables, oil, and legumes and are starting to look at new varieties.

Resources Access
Smallholder farmers are operating on just a few acres of land, yet represent 80% of the food production
in Africa. They are dispersed, landlocked and limited in cash, thus making it extremely difficult to access
inputs or equipment. Marketplaces and sharing platforms aim at giving farmers the production tools
they need.

Esoko is an information and communication service for agricultural markets in Africa that recently
launched Tulaa, a marketplace for inputs. It combines mobile technology and last mile agent networks to
connect input suppliers, financial service providers, and commodity buyers to smallholder farmers.

Apart from inputs, access to natural resources (i.e. water and energy) is a prerequisite for farming activi-
ty. Efficient management solutions are necessary to limit costs and waste. SunCulture, a start-up in
Kenya is proposing an innovative solution. Their AgroSolar Irrigation Kit is a solar-powered irrigation sys-
tem – a solar water pumping technology and a high-efficiency drip irrigation, bundled with a “pay-as-
you-grow” financing service launched in 2016.

Farmers’ knowledge
With better agronomic practices and knowledge on value-add operations, farmers could obtain higher
yields and better quality products. Yet the current farming system is based on traditional practices re-
layed from father to son. How can these isolated villagers have access and adopt best farming practices?
This effort is commonly done by NGOs but a few other actors are also entering the field. For instance:

Ojay Greene (Kenya) offers training, advisory services and market access for underserved smallhold-
er farmers;
ICT4Dev (Côte d’Ivoire) integrates ICT solutions for farmers’ problems through platform design, web
management tools, mobile, SMS and voice;
AgroSpaces (Cameroon) is a networking site connecting agricultural communities to share informa-
tion and form valuable connections.

Farm Management Software, Sensing & IoT

As the saying goes, “what you measure, you optimize”. Farmers are operating in uncertain environments
and are eager to obtain smart recommendations. UjuziKilimo is a Kenyan company that utilizes data sci-
ence and machine learning to provide actionable agronomic insights to farmers. Data on soil and crops
are obtained with sensors and farmers can get real-time information and advice by SMS. Sokopepe is an-
other Kenyan startup offering market information and farm records management services
through FARMIS, a farm management and diagnostic tool and SOKO+, a digital commodity trading and
information system, linking small-scale farmers to end retailers and bulk purchasers of produce.
Farm Robotics, Mechanization & Equipment
Startups are working on automating many repetitive, tiring tasks in order for farmers to save time and
energy. A good example is DroneScan, specially-designed drone attachments that can take inventory in
food storage facilities and provide live feedback. The Institue for Grape and Wine Sciences is also work-
ing on a robot in South Africa for data gathering purposes on vineyards.

Midstream Technologies
Nowadays, consumers are increasingly looking at the life of products from “farm to fork” — they want to
know the story behind the product. This is a great challenge in Africa, where logistics can be very tricky.
Some Agtech start-ups are laying the foundation for a leaner supply chain, including quality testing de-
vices, sensors for products’ traceability and safety, and smart logistics. iProcure is the largest agricultur-
al supply chain platform in rural Africa. In addition to complete procurement and last-mile distribution
services, the Kenyan company provides business intelligence and data-driven stock management across
the supply chains. AfriSoft is a technology and software solutions provider in South Africa that address-
es challenges such as warehouse management, quality, traceability and production tracking.

AgriBusiness Marketplaces
In Africa, the food supply chain is highly dependent on middlemen that take advantage of smallholder
farmers given their limited market connectivity. Margins are then split between all these intermediaries,
to the detriment of farmers. Some companies thus enable farmers to sell their products online, reaching
final customers and increasing their revenues. M-Farm is a Kenyan startup providing a platform to con-
nect farmers directly to buyers and inform them of price trends to optimize planting and harvesting
timing.

Novel Farming Systems

The decreasing percentage of arable lands along with increasing pressure of climate change calls for
more sustainable processes to produce food with fewer resources. The most well-known alternative to
current farming systems is indoor farming, by growing produce in high-tech greenhouses and automat-
ed vertical farms. This includes aquaponics and hydroponics along with production facilities for new liv-
ing ingredients such as insects, and algae. Fresh Direct Nigeria brings fresh premium organic produce
closer to market with their container farm technology. Using hydroponics and vertical farming within a
shipping container, the company is able to grow directly in urban areas.

Using fly larvae fed on existing organic waste, AgriProtein from South Africa has developed and tested a
new large-scale and sustainable source of natural protein.
Africa has the potential to turn into the breadbasket of the world, but the way is still long and arduous.
Bright minds should keep looking for solutions fitted to the needs and adapted to the African context. As
pointed out by Sudanese billionaire and philanthropist Mo Ibrahim, “This is neither a good time for Afro-
optimism nor for Afro-pessimism! Africa needs to move towards Afro-realism.”

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AFRICA BIOTECH FINTECH NOVEL FARMING SYSTEMS STARTUP CORNER

3 THOUGHTS ON “AFRICAN AGTECH MARKET MAP: 99 TECHNOLOGIES CHANGING THE

FUTURE OF AGRICULTURE IN AFRICA”

cornelis heesbeen
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 AT 10:50 AM

How do we get our products in this overview, with the largest integrated network of grouped farm-
ers in east africa, and tools for finance, electronic marketplaces, on line buying, plot registration,
best practices, crop calendars, incident reporting, and our development for agri advice and weath-
erforecast, product selector, digital agri coach, seed selector, etc. we would like to know how we
could connect.

Nick Moon
FEBRUARY 27, 2018 AT 3:50 AM

Interesting feature thanks. Some additional points/questions:

1. You cannot talk of smallholder irrigation in Africa without mentioning KickStart’s ‘MoneyMaker’
human powered pressure pumps. Over 300,000 MoneyMakers have been sold to farmers in East,
Southern and West Africa. Thats a big number. And tens of thousands of ‘knock-off’ copies of Mon-
eyMakers are also out there – some not so good, some really bad.
2. Wanda Organic is not a start up any more. Bio-organic soil and plant health products(fertilizers
and sprays) are made available to tens of thousands of smallholders in Kenya via a USSD platform
run by Wanda Mobile. Farmers access markets for their products via Wanda Soko.
3. Is M Farm still functioning? Their website shows latest post 22 July 2016.

Alonzo Gracia
APRIL 10, 2018 AT 1:17 PM

You left out leading Africa’s grain marketplace http://www.zowasel.com and crowdfunding and
training agtech startup http://www.growsel.com. You need to visit them to learn more. There are
been supported by Nigeria’s advertising agency @Streettoolz based in Maryland, Lagos