Ghana Farmerline receives US$12.9m funding to assist farmers
By Anthony-Apr 26, 20220
Eric Acquah Agro Services
Eric Acquah Agro Services
A McKinsey and Co. learn about suggests that whilst sub-Saharan Africa has the plausible to expand (even triple) its agricultural output and usual contribution to the economy, the zone stays untapped mostly due to lack of getting entry satisfactory farm inputs, up to par infrastructures like warehousing and market. This is in an economic system that derives 23% of its GDP from agriculture, with 60% of its populace being worried about small-scale farming.
Noting necessary gaps in the region’s agri-food space, Ghanaian agritech Farmerline has stepped in to supply applied sciences that are envisaged to amplify farmers’ get admission to notable manufacturing inputs and schooling on the fantastic farming practices along with on how to higher deal with the consequences of local weather change. Its options are additionally designed to guide a speedy get right of entry to markets via farmers for higher incomes and a discount on post-harvest loss and waste.
$12.9 million pre-Series A funding
Farmerline used to be headquartered in 2013 through Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai. It is now equipped for a fast take-off with plans to attain 300,000 farmers in 2022, an almost 400% expansion in a boom in contrast to the final year. It will begin its growth in Ghana earlier than increasing to the neighboring Ivory Coast, accelerated by using a clean $12.9 million ($6.4m fairness and $6.5m debt) pre-Series A funding.
The fairness spherical used to be led with the aid of the Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) and FMO, the Dutch entrepreneurial improvement bank, with participation from the Greater Impact Foundation. Debt lenders protected DEG, Rabobank, Ceniarth, Rippleworks, Mulago Foundation, Whole Planet Foundation, the Netri Foundation, and Kiva.
Attah advised TechCrunch that the agtech will use its first fairness funding to construct bodily infrastructures like warehouses and distribution networks.
“We assume of ourselves as the Amazon of farmers… a digital and bodily infrastructure powering a market that lets in the motion of items and offerings to and from rural areas,” stated Attah.
“We graph to use the funding to give a boost to our infrastructure, that is warehouses and distribution channels. Having a community of companions that can assist us rapidly go inputs like fertilizer and seeds to rural areas, and farm produces from rural areas, is essential and section of what we do. We don’t intend to convey all of the logistics and storage in-house, however, we prefer to be extra environment friendly and that capacity working with the proper partners,” he said.
Greater reach
Farmerline works with agribusinesses (usually small retail outlets that inventory farm inputs) to make sure that farmers get the right of entry to extremely good supplies. These store owners, normally the first factor of expertise for the farmers, are used using Farmerline to distribute instructional fabric and to accumulate farmers collectively for training. The partnering retail outlets use the startup’s Mergdata, a proprietary AI technological know-how platform for furnish chain intelligence, to digitize the farmers they serve, and to generate the information the agritech wishes to predict the demand of farm supplies.
We are tapping into that community of agribusiness, and in a way, we are tapping into a community of have confidence — the relationship that these save proprietors have with farmers to assist us to expand,” stated Attiah.
The partnership with retailers, stated Attiah, emerged after Farmerline realized that working without delay with the farmers would quantity to “compete with nearby businesses, and it didn’t make any sense. The value of going door to door to every farmer was once honestly high,” he said.
“Working with the agribusinesses made our agencies scalable, and it additionally helped us make greater effect mainly at some point of the pandemic when we couldn’t journey — they grew to be our eyes and ears on the ground. We despatched vans full of fertilizer and seeds to them that they would then distribute to farmers. That mannequin labored virtually well.”
Using Mergdata, Farmerline can inform the overall performance of their partnering agribusinesses (retail shops), and strengthen a credit score scoring software that publications the extension of enterprise enlargement loans.
According to Attiah, the startup extra than doubled its direct-reach final yr to 79,000 farmers, up from 36,000 in 2020 and 8,000 in 2019.
Moreover, via 0.33 birthday celebration licensing for Mergdata — which is now used by way of a hundred and eighty purchasers which includes governments, non-governmental businesses, and agri-companies to make certain transparency in their furnish chain and traceability — the agtech has digitized over 1 million farmers in 26 international locations throughout the globe. Benin, in West Africa, makes use of the platform as a country-wide market facts system.
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