Denis Opudo
Nigerian based agritech startup Farmcrowdy emerged the overall winner of the Digital Business of the Year Award. The startup received the award at the Global African Business Awards (GABA) event. The event which takes annually this year was conducted in Addis Ababa the capital city of Ethiopia. The developers of the Global African Business Awards had an aim of celebrating and honoring the achievement and positive contributions of organizations that are based in Africa.
Farmcrowdy received stiff competition from other startups that were shortlisted for the Digital Business of the Year award category. The shortlisted startups included Konga, Zando, and Jumia both of which are e-commerce platforms. There was also Interswitch, a payment gateway which is the most extensive farmer to farmer digital network. Delvv.io, a refinement and branding partner in South Africa was also shortlisted for the awards.
According to founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy, Onyeka Akumah, the platform was happy to have their hard work of that focused at making an impact on the lives of rural farmers noticed. He added that they were pleased about the vast opportunities that lie ahead of them as they continue with the fight of being the main player of technological innovation in Agriculture within Nigeria and Africa as a whole. The platform has managed to empower more than 7,000 direct and indirect rural farmers in the last 20 months. Moreover, it has given a platform to many farm sponsors to take part in the agriculture from their mobile phones or computers to generate profit after harvesting.
Farmcrowdy has also secured seed funding worth $1.4 million from both local and international investors. The investors include Techstars Ventures, Social Capital, and Cox Enterprises. Furthermore, it recently secured a grant from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovator Fund. The startup has used the fund in expanding its operations to ten states in Nigeria. It also has plans to expand to other Nigerian regions and states.
