Nigeria’s Agriarche is a female-founded agritech startup that offers farmers and produce aggregators storage, inputs, logistics and payments services. Its mobile platform, called Kasuwa, links them to more than a dozen offtakers, including food processors and other Nigerian consumer goods brands.
Agriarche received a $500,000 working capital loan from the Social Enterprise Fund for Agriculture in Africa or SEFAA fund. The $24 million impact fund launched in 2021 with backing from German development bank, KfW to provide debt for Africa’s small to medium-sized agribusinesses.
“The agricultural value chain remains highly fragmented, with farmers located far from economic hubs, leading to the emergence of multiple intermediaries” before their harvest reaches consumer goods companies,” said Deji Adebusoye of Sahel Capital, which manages SEFAA.
Food security
Agriarche was an implementing partner, alongside MercyCorps, for the five-year, USAID-funded Feed the Future Nigeria Rural Resilience Activity program. The program, which ended last year, aimed to increase incomes in Nigeria’s northeast, one of the country’s most food insecure regions. Agriarche expanded its reach to a dozen sub-states in the region, training over 12,000 farmers in sustainable food production and providing them with market links to fair commodity prices. Adebusoye said Agriarche had eliminated middlemen, “allowing farmers to receive fairer prices and reinvest larger amounts into subsequent planting cycles.”
SEFAA invested over $6 million in agribusinesses last year, including Ugandan coffee processor and exporter Sukuma Commodities and Kenyan dairy-focused biotechnology company Geneplus.
