Rinchi
TechInAfrica – Village Capital’s Agriculture Africa 2019 Accelerator program has announced nine startups to participate in the program. The program focuses on real solutions to improve outcomes for small farmers as well as to tackle food security challenges on the continent.
It is a collaborative program between Village Capital, Small Foundation, and Ceniarth. Ceniarth will give award prizes worth $100,000 for the top two winning ventures.
Selected ventures are those that meet all criteria set by the organizers of the program which include:
- Enterprises that address agri-value chain issues end-to-end
- Enterprises that use technology in providing their products or services
- Enterprises that work across multiple commodities
- Enterprises that deploy social networks in delivering their products or services
- Businesses specialize in urban agriculture, agriculture, and hardware.
“At Village Capital, we believe agriculture entrepreneurs can address these gaps. Entrepreneurs have the potential to raise productivity for small farmers, increase food security, improve and secure the value chain, and strengthen links to markets, all while generating job growth and local economic development,” said the company.
The Village Capital’s Agriculture Africa 2019 Accelerator has selected nine ventures to join the program. They include:
- Akellobanker (Uganda) – it enables farmers to access, order for and share farm extension workers, inputs, tools, and equipment on credit, from verified service providers. It uses data and mobile tech to give financial access to millions of low-income earners in Uganda.
- Agro Supply (Uganda) – a platform with a mobile layaway product allowing farmers to leverage savings, rather than credit, for investing in their farm productivity
- AYWAJIEUNE (Senegal) – an online platform for fish products. It allows fishermen to sell their products easily to consumers, restaurants, and hotels which benefit from easier access to the market and competitive prices
- CAPTURE Solutions Ltd (Kenya) – it provides unique B2B ICT applications to companies and organizations that need to re-organize and streamline their working processes
- Complete Farmer (Ghana) – an end-to-end digital agriculture platform that makes it easy for industries to source quality food raw materials and convenient for anyone anywhere to own a farm
- eMsika (Zambia) – it helps farmers find, buy, and receive farm inputs and advisory services from the comfort of their farms
- Raino Tech4Impact (Kenya) – a platform that promotes sustainable agriculture by leveraging on technology, data, and innovative business models
- ReelFruit (Nigeria) – the largest dried fruit processing firm retailing a range of six unique dried fruit and nut snacks to a wide variety of customers including over 250 supermarkets nationwide, airlines, hotels, schools and on Amazon.com
- Volta Irrigation (Rwanda) – an environmentally restorative social enterprise aims at unlocking the productivity potential for smallholder farmers through the provision of affordable and accessible irrigation services.
Source: vc4a.com
