As a five-year-old boy, Alloysius lived with his aunt, who is a smallholder farmer in a rural community in Ghana. The 15 years he spent with her, fueled his dream to establish a farm in the future.
Alloysius founded Alloyworld, a photography and video production company and iCottage Networks, a software company, after graduating from college. In 2013, he co-founded Farmline with Emmanuel Owusu Addai, an agritech startup that supports smallholder farmers in Ghana.

See also: Personality of the Week: Cynthia Mosunmola Umoru

Farmline has served over 200,000 farmers and mapped out 70,000 hectares of farmlands across 11 countries. Alloysius has received several awards for leading the overall strategy and vision of the company. Some of the awards received include the 2017 CNBC Africa’s Young Business Leader Award, the Echoing Green Global Fellowship, and the Cordes Fellowship.

At the Cambridge Institute of Sustainable Leadership, he emerged finalist of the HRM Prince of Wales and Unilever Sustainable Living Young Entrepreneur Award

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Co-Founder and CEO, Farmcrowdy

Years later, Onyeka bagged a first-class degree in Applied Information from the Sikkim Manipal University of Health, Medical and Technological Sciences in India. Thereafter, he gathered measurable work experiences from several job roles at Wakanow, Jumia, Guaranty Trust Bank, Konga, Travelbeta, CoSign Inc., etc. In 2015, he decided to apply his technical know-how to agriculture, after conducting research.

Farmcrowdy Group was the brain-child of the research, birthed with a team of Onyeka’s co-founders in 2016. Today, the company is the parent company to Farmgate, a technology-driven agro-trading platform for agro commodities in Africa. The Farmcrowdy Group is now a leading agritech company with over 12,000 farmers registered across 13 states in Nigeria

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Egypt has been searching for ways to boost its food production and becoming a smart agriculture nation will go a long way in actualizing this dream. This recent partnership marks the second deal the ministry will be signing with the UN. The deal also aligns with Egypt’s Sustainable Agricultural Development Strategy 2030.

See also: World Bank & Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture Launches Agritech Incubator Program

To actualize this move, the ministry is setting up a central information center that contains a full collated database of food production operations all around Egypt. The information includes the raising of cattle, poultry, and fish.

Dr. Ezzeldin Aboustit, the Agricultural Minister of Egypt says it’s urgent to deploy digital technologies in agriculture to boost farmers’ access to data and information, and in the process double their decision-making, and boost the quality of farm produce.

Based on this new project, Egypt will be digitally mapped, thereby granting farmers access to where the accurate location of their target market and information of what nature plans in terms of desertification rates. Farmers will also have access to animal disease monitor which help boost epidemic-control resource.

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The incubator will gather millions of Kenyan farmers together to provide a digital platform for market access, information, and financial services. It will serve as an avenue for digital and disruptive technologies on the agricultural value chain. The program is open to agritech startups focused on precision agriculture, Internet of Things, Drone Technology, Crop/Soil/Weed/Disease Sensing and fintech solutions.

See also: Crenov8 Organizes Media Launch Event for Meet the Farmers Conference 2019 in Rwanda

The Institute of Security Studies estimates that food production in Kenya would have to grow by 75% by 2030 to meet the demands of the increasing population. According to the World Bank Global Lead for Rural Livelihoods and Agricultural Jobs, Parmesh Shah, the World Bank Group and partners will harness innovative technology to improve food security and farmer incomes through the initiative.

As the name implies, the initiatives sets to benefit 1 million farmers within the next three years. It aims to transform smallholder farmers in Kenya into mass food producers. The digital platforms will link small businesses to trade with buyers at better rates and increase their income earnings. It will also act as a shared data bank for information such as farm registration data, soil map data, and weather satellite data for those on the platform.

More on MTFC:

• Highlights of Agriculture in North Africa
• South African Farmers to enjoy Free Satellite Farming Data
• Nigerian Agricultural Sector Introduces Smart Seed Labeling Technology to Eliminate Low-Quality Seeds
• Gracia Farms Looks to Partner with Meet the Farmers Conference for Sustainable Agriculture
• Precision Farming in Agriculture

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Jehiel Oliver, globally recognized as CEO of Hello Tractor earned a Masters in Economics from Cornell University and a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics and Business from Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University. He had worked for over 10 years in management consulting and investment banking before he founded Hello Tractor in 2014.

Hello Tractor provides machinery for smallholder farmers in Africa. Farmers are able to connect with tractor owners through a digital platform. Cloud monitoring hardware is installed on the tractor for farmers to be able to track the location.

Jehiel has been awarded severally for his work in social entrepreneurship. While as an appointed member of the President’s Advisory Council on Doing Business in Africa, he chairman of the technology subcommittee. He was one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers for 2016 by Foreign Policy Magazine.

Photocredit: hellotractor.com
At the 6th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit in sub-Saharan Africa.

He presently serves as a board member of Shared Interest Impact Investment Fund and H4H— two focused investment companies in sub- Sahara Africa.

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Qualitrace (Ghana), AgriQ & Automations (Kenya), Spiderbit (Rwanda) also pitched at the event with SmartFarm (Nigeria) emerging the winner. These four start-ups that pitched at the Grand Finale had all won the regional pitch competitions which was held in Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria.

See Also: Smart Farms Wins Nigeria Innov8Agric Challenge, to Compete with Other Start-ups for $5,000

SmartFarm provides commercial farming hub where busy professionals and beginning farmers can get access to land, modern farming facilities, professional management and market so they generate income from a passive investment which does not distract them from their regular jobs. This start-up provides a ‘co-working space’ for farming where mechanization, ICT tools, Irrigation facilities are accessible and affordable to maximize productivity.

The Startup jury panel at the pitch comprised of Sanjay Sethi, Director of Sustainability, Phoenix Group DMCC; Khaleel Summers, Co-Founder & MD, TK Consulting; Prof. Mohamed A. Badawi, General Manager, Emirates Bio Fertilizer Factory and Par Soderlund, Founder and CEO of Peritius Farm DMCC drilled the audience and combined their wealth of knowledge and experience to select the winner.

SmartFarm will also get an opportunity to get funding, and investment opportunities from African and GCC investors. The start-up was picked based on its innovation, originality, social and the viability of its ideas which was vetted by the judges.

MTFC is an initiative of Crenov8, a leading conglomerate consulting & Digital Media firm in the Middle East, Dubai, and Africa. Last year, Crenov8 embarked on this mission to create a platform where the African agricultural producers will meet with off takers in the Middle East and beyond, to translate business deals and network, collaborate, and form potential business partnerships across borders, to promote food security in the Middle East and promote agribusiness in Africa.

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The challenge is a part of Meet the Farmers Conference (MTFC), an agro conference organised by Crenov8 Consulting and it is targeted at connecting small and large scale agro commodity producers to buyers and investors in the Middle East.

Smart Farms provides a co-working space for farming where mechanization, ICT tools, Irrigation facilities are accessible and affordable to maximize productivity.

The start-up will now compete with other selected African agric-tech start-ups: Qualitrace (Ghana), AgriQ & Automations (Kenya), and Spiderbit (Rwanda) for a $5,000 grant price at the international Meet the Farmers Conference.

See Also: Spiderbit Wins Innov8Agric Challenge, Rwanda

This will hold In Dubai on the 4th – 5th November 2018. The start-up would receive an all-expense paid trip to Dubai to attend the two-day conference and the Grand Finale of the challenge. They will also get an opportunity to get funding, and investment opportunities from African and GCC investors.

The start-up was picked based on its innovation, originality, and the viability of its ideas which was vetted by top-notch entrepreneurs, investors and industry leaders across Africa.

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Huge Congratulations to Smart Farms, Winner of the Nigerian Innova8Agric Challenge! We can’t wait to see you pitch at Dubai!

A post shared by Meet The Farmers Conference (@meetthefarmersconference) on Oct 10, 2018 at 12:37pm PDT

The ‘Innov8 challenge’ is a key event at the Meet The Farmers Conference and it’s meant to promote innovative ideas for agrictech start-ups from all sectors of the ecosystem using creative and modern methods to change the landscape of the agriculture value chain in Africa. AgroMerchant, Crop2Cash, and FoodHubs also participated in the pitch.

MTFC is an initiative of Crenov8, a leading conglomerate consulting & Digital Media firm in the Middle East, Dubai, and Africa.

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Leading mobile network operator in Kenya, Safaricom has launched a Digifarm depot in Burnt Forest in Uasin Gishu County of the country.

Digifarm is a mobile phone-based solution that allows government and service providers in the field of agriculture to interact with and offer agricultural-related services to smallholder farmers in Kenya who, previously had no access to any support structures.

Victor Ngumo who is the Safaricom Head of Rift Region said that the depot is part of the company’s efforts to provide access to high quality inputs and provide sustainable markets in a bid to encourage more smallholder farmers to transition into agribusiness.

He said “Sixty percent of Kenyans are employed in the agricultural sector but only 30 percent of our GDP comes from agriculture. This means that there is a gap. We understand that small scale farmers have a lot of challenges and that is why we came up with the idea.”

Also See: China Now Demanding For Nigeria’s Sorghum, Soyabeans – Audu Ogbeh

He stressed that the depot which was opened in partnership with agricultural supply chain experts iProcure is targeted at thousands of farmers across the county. Ngumo added that since the launch of Digifarm in October 2017, over 672,000 farmers had been registered and over 7,000 loans had been disbursed through a mobile phone module.

“The farmers in and around the county will receive high quality seeds, fertilisers, animal feeds and agricultural chemicals. Farmers will be able to purchase these inputs via M-PESA or credit payable between 30, 60 or – 90 days depending on the credit package a farmer gets,” he added.

Ngumo added that the depot would act as a source of vital data for the county government enabling them to use the information for planning and resource allocation.

The platform will also improves collection of agricultural data by registering farmers and allowing them to key in information such as the size of their farms and nature of farming activities.

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