Meet 3 Women-Led Agribusiness Startups Driving Change in West Africa

189

In the rather complex and highly fragmented agricultural landscape in West Africa, these agribusinesses are providing targeted, tech-driven innovations that provide solutions to various areas of the identified value and supply chains, with smallholder poultry farmers at the centre. Some of these agritech start-ups are spotlighted in this article.

There are untapped agribusiness opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa. These opportunities have been captured by some of the women-led agribusinesses in West Africa.

Pullus Africa 

Source: Pullus Africa

The company was founded in 2022 and is headquartered in Kaduna, Nigeria. Pullus Africa (formally Pullus Africa Solutions Ltd) has built a niche. Using technology-enabled solutions to build a poultry-exclusive supply-chain platform that links farmers to credit, inputs, markets and advisory services.  Based on the four pillars of improved productivity, premium market access, extension support, and community support, the company’s playbook combines hands-on poultry experience, software engineering, and market expertise. This approach promotes an inclusive approach that addresses the sector’s chronic problems of market and credit access, quality, and volatility.

The problem Pullus tackles is painfully familiar to poultry producers, especially the smallholder farmers characterised by small flock sizes, inconsistent access to good-quality feed and inputs, weak linkages to reliable buyers, and near or non-existent pathways to affordable finance and insurance. 

This resonates with the founders (Opeyemi and Abisoye), particularly the Chief Executive Officer- Opeyemi Fayomi, who, as a smallholder farmer herself, transitioned into commercial operations in the space of a year. Her farming experience, serves as the bedrock for the operations of Pullus Africa.

Pullus has also run farmer-focused activities (for example, Poultry Empowerment and Farmers First Activity) in partnership with organisations such as Heifer Nigeria and has engaged with sector development programs that reach tens of thousands of farmers. In just 2 to 3 years, Pullus Africa has on-boarded over 28,000 farmers, partnered with about 54 vendors, supplied and processed about 528 metric tonnes of chicken, and worked with 309 cluster poultry farmers. 

Sommalife

Source: Sommalife

The company was founded in 2020 and its headquarered in Wa, the upper west region of Ghana. The company focuses on transforming the shea value chain. The shea value chain is a vital economic activity for millions of women farmers in West Africa. The company was founded by Mawuse Christina Gyisun, who also doubles as the Chief Operating Officer, and JohnCarl Dunyo, the Chief Executive Officer. The company recently secured € 440,000 in debt financing to address operational and logistical bottlenecks from the Kampani, the Brussels-based social impact fund. 

The problem Sommalife is solving is digitising the shea value chain in Ghana.  Over 16 million women in Africa, concentrated in West Africa make a living from shea for survival. However, desertification, claiming 20,000 hectares of land annually, threatens both their livelihoods and the environment. Furthermore, unsustainable practices, including high dependence on shea trees for charcoal production, expose the environment to diminishing biodiversity that produces unsustainable ripple effects.

In addition, specific challenges in the value chain, like limited market access, lack of resources and knowledge in sustainable agriculture for the shea farmers, hinder both economic gain and conservation efforts, pushing these women deeper into poverty.

Sommalife’s innovations include:

1. Digital Traceability and Inclusion via TreeSyt, a proprietary digital platform to digitise operations of smallholder shea farmers, ensure transparency and traceable supply chains from farm to buyer, enable farm agents to collect data, monitor environmental impact, and disseminate knowledge to farmers.
2. Economic Empowerment & Sustainability. Sommalife’s intervention provides farmers the ability to earn about 21% above local market prices, which improves income, sustainability and economic stability. In addition, Sommalife’s operations provide integrated conservation efforts by supporting seedling planting, parkland management, and climate resilience activities, as reported.

Furthermore, Sommalife’s digital platform operates offline, which provides offline capabilities for field agents, enabling them to operate in low-connectivity rural areas. Sommalife has protected over 1,500 acres of shea trees, over 110,000 farmers on board, over 27,000 trees protected, and over 100,000 seedlings raised.  Sommalife’s revenues soared from $2,000 in 2020, when it was founded, to $1.2 million in 2022; the business model includes a 30% margin on commodities sold. Sommalife also achieves $2 million in annual revenue, trades more than 4 million kg of shea, and serves 20 international buyers, according to Africa Business Heroes. 

Farmz2u

Farmz2u is a Nigeria-based agritech platform founded in 2019 by Aisha Raheem–Bolarinwa. It operates across Nigeria and Kenya, with ambitions to expand its impact across Sub-Saharan Africa. With the vision of ‘enabling a food system that is sustainable and profitable for all market players’ and a mission to ‘increase efficiency for market players in the food system through seamless operational systems’, Farmz2u provides increased efficiency in the supply chain of agricultural commodities and products.  

Essentially, the company’s aim is to streamline and modernise agricultural supply chains by bridging the gap between growers (farmers), suppliers, and buyers. Its goal is to ultimately build a sustainable, traceable, and efficient food ecosystem driven by data.

The is addressing supply chain structural and sustainability gaps while effectively connecting stakeholders. This is achieved through the technology-enabled innovation and platform ‘Talon’, and also the farm management platform ‘Kuju’.

Kuju is a farm management tool that equips growers with digital extension services, traceability, data capture, and risk profiling capabilities, while Talon is a B2B e-procurement solution that connects suppliers and buyers with aggregated growers, offering procurement management, embedded finance, inventory control, and real-time tracking.

Farmz2U has onboarded over 30,000 growers, over 100 suppliers, and more than 25 buyers. They are also strategically providing sustainability practices through regenerative farming, with noticeable outcomes as reported:

• Over 3,500 tons of CO₂ sequestered yearly.
• Goals set for 2025 include increasing CO₂ sequestration to 15,000 tons annually, increasing the income of growers by 300% and also increasing female participation among its users by 50%.

Characteristics of these Agritech Startups:

1. Technology at the Core:

These start-ups are solving real-life challenges within the value chain. Some of the challenges being solved are operational, supply chain bottlenecks, and structural gaps in identified value chains using technology-enabled platforms. 

2. Sustainability and Resource Efficiency:

They address sustainability challenges like carbon sequestration, shortening supply chains and making it more inclusive while promoting a resource-efficient agri-food system.

3. Addressing Local Pain Points:

These startups also address local pain points that solve specific issues in the value chain. For example, Pullus Africa solves issues in the poultry value chain.

4. Scalability and Global Impact:

While rooted in their local communities, their solutions are often adaptable to other markets experiencing similar challenges, while they contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals. 

Final Reflections

These agribusinesses represent a promising example of how technology is applied to agriculture. The technology-enabled solutions and innovations targeted towards identified value chains provide an increase in efficiency and effectiveness.  Using technology also provides the needed platform for scaling the possibilities of the solutions.