Tech in Africa
Good Nature Agro just completed a Serie A funding worth $2.1 million. The Zambia-based tech company is specialized in the end-to-end legume value chain. Goodwell Investments led the round that saw participation from existing seed investors, FINCA Ventures, and Global Partnerships.
Story
Good Nature Agro was founded in 2014 by Carl Jensen, Kellan Hays, and Sunday Silungwe. Carl and Sunday met in the United States with an aim of lifting Good Nature Agro from poverty to the middle class.
Good Nature Agro has transformed the lives of smallholder farmers who specialize in legume farming. The productivity of their yield is enhanced through soil-enriching farming techniques while linking them to high-value legume markets. Farmers contracted with Good Nature Agro earn 3 to 4 times more than those specializing in traditional cash crops like maize. Legumes are of high importance to the health of the soil as they replenish nitrogen in the soil, and they are resistant to climate changes.
Special business model
GNA will support 15,000 farmers in 2020 through its extension services, financial planning packages, reliable off-take contracts, and goal-centered framework. The company uses a source, a special sales and production model.
The source model used by GNA means they first establish contact with large-scale agribusinesses and food processing companies that need legume crops grown according to certain processing specifications. It then contracts the outgrower farmer network to grow these legumes from special GNA seeds.
In excerpts from the released press statement, Carl Jensen, who is the co-founder and CEO of Good Nature Agro said, “Our focus on personal advice and service delivery to farmers even as we scale is the key to our social impact and our momentum.”
Mercy Zulu, an investment associate at Goodwill Investments said, “Good Nature Agro is addressing many of these issues by providing access to credit, inputs, critical technical services, and market linkages in a way that benefits smallholder farmers and promotes sector growth. This makes the company a good fit for uMunthu’s inclusive agribusiness strategy.”
