Nine startups from across the continent have been selected for the Agriculture Africa accelerator run by Village Capital, which will offer two winning ventures US$50,000 each in funding.
Village Capital, which runs a host of accelerators across Africa using its innovative peer-selection method, said Agriculture Africa 2019 is focused on solutions that improve outcomes for small farmers and address food security issues.
This year, the programme has partnered Small Foundation and Ceniarth, the latter of which has committed US$50,000 to each of the top two peer-selected ventures. The programme has been designed to assist agri-tech startups that can provide granular solutions to help smallholder farmers.
The selected startups include two from Uganda – Akellobanker, which enables farmers to purchase inputs on credit, and Agro Supply, a mobile layaway product – and two from Kenya – workflow streamlining solution Capture and data platform Raino Tech4Impact.
Also selected are Senegalese online platform for fish products Aywajieune, Ghanaian agri-investment platform Complete Farmer, Zambian inputs e-commerce startup eMsika, Nigerian dried fruit processing company ReelFruit, and Rwandan irrigation services firm Volta Irrigation.
“We’re really excited about this agriculture cohort, which includes some incredible diverse solutions from across Sub-Saharan Africa. We kept our call quite broad, from hardware to vertical farming, and I’m glad we were able to comb through a strong semi-finalist batch to land where we are today. I’m also thrilled to expand our support of Ugandan and southern African ventures with this group,” said Adedana Ashebir, regional manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Village Capital.
