Agri-tech – Africa Tech Digest

Nigerian agritech startup Releaf secures $4.2M to scale its food processing technology

15Sep

By Africa Tech DigestNo Comments

Agri-tech, Start-ups

Nigerian agritech startup Releaf secures $4.2M to scale its food processing technology

The distance between their farms and the nearest processor is key for smallholder farmers who need to process their crops. And though Nigeria’s food processing systems have a keen resemblance to the West with respect to big factories and huge economies of scale in high-demand cities, farmers still suffer from poor logistics networks. With distance and logistics problems, farmers’ crops can go bad and when factories buy them, it affects their processing yields and price. Farmers, witnessing post-harvest loss, also get paid less and miss the opportunity to invest in their crops production. Nigerian agritech startup Releaf is solving this by building proprietary hardware and software solutions to make these farmers and food factories more efficient and profitable. Today, the company is...

New Africa Tech Company Connects Farmers and Buyers

Farmcrowdy Group (FCG), has launched a new subsidiary, Farmgate Africa, a technology-driven agro-trading market place for agriculture commodities in Africa. Led by Kenneth Obiajulu, Co-Founder & Managing Director, Farmgate Africa (FGA) is bridging the gap between rural farmers and processors. Buyers have the opportunity to purchase commodities directly from farming clusters through technology. The Farmgate Africa platform serves to build relationships between local farmers and major processors, aggregating commodities while paying attention to the unique specifications of the buyers. The system allows everyday Nigerians fund the process of buying and selling what farmers have already harvested. This will give every farmer that has produced high-quality farm produce, the opportun...

In Africa, tech-savvy entrepreneurs sow seeds of a farming revolution

From invaluable farming advice shared via text message to livestock vaccines delivered when and where they are needed thanks to a mobile phone service, agri-tech and precision farming are changing the face of agriculture across Africa. This transformation is an urgent imperative. With global warming threatening harvests, and the world’s population set to grow to around 10 billion by 2050, a sustainable agricultural revolution is needed to secure food supplies and protect the resources that sustain us. For Ndubuisi Ekekwe, Nigerian founder of precision farming startup Zenvus, African farming must change because traditional practices keep many farmers trapped in a cycle of poverty. “What we have been doing for generations has not worked so now there needs to be a paradigm shif...