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African agriculture, especially small farms, have not had it easy over the past few years. Droughts, pests, floods, and local conflict have exacerbated challenges for many food producers. This is why insurtech startup Pula is working to provide small farmers with insurance to help manage the implications of climate change and other environmental uncertainties. The startup begins the farming season by sending representatives to farms to gauge the potential yield of the season. Pula then sends this estimate to insurance companies to generate a policy offer. According to Pula, the initiative has been so successful because in every African country they have worked in, there are insurance companies willing to support their initiative.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

AgroCenta is an innovative online platform that empowers small holder farmers and farmer based organizations in rural farming communities access a wider online market outside their immediate locality to trade fairly and equitably. They can access technological tools and information that will inform them on best farming practices such weather information, market information and finally access to agro inputs such as fertilizers, pesticides and weedicides directly from stakeholders.

AgroCenta's innovation focuses on the post harvest value chain. The suite of services within AgroCenta provides an end-to-end solution that ensures that it provides a win-win situation for the smallholder farmer and all active players in the value chain. If a smallholder farmer wants to know the latest market price of maize in the nearest market to enable him price competitively, he uses AgroInfo to request for information via SMS and Voice solutions. After the farmers has made a decision on how much to sell, the farmer's commodity information are uploaded onto the AgroTrade platform to connect him to buyers. When a trade agreement is reached between the farmer and a buyer, the farmer requests for TruckR, which is the truck delivery service component of AgroCenta, in real time using mobile phone. After the commodities are sold to the buyer, the farmer is paid via the AgroPay solution, which is the financial inclusion platform within AgroCenta

AgroCenta targets about 10 million smallholder farmers in Sub Saharan Africa within the next 5 years to help them trade fairly. Over 90% of these smallholder farmers live under $1 and are not able to make enough money from sales proceed to take care of their families and re-invest a percentage of the money raised back into their farms.

AgroCenta's value proposition lies in the advantage of providing the last mile market access for smallholder farmers in the staple food value chain through extensive collaboration with many partners who play an active role in the value chain.

Another startup is Apollo Agriculture which raised $6 million Series A, akin to Pula. Not only did the pair raise the same round, Apollo Agriculture and Pula both deal with providing financial resources to smallholder farmers.

Pula is solving this problem by using technology and data. Through its Area Yield Index Insurance product, the insurtech startup leverages machine learning, crop-cut experiments and data points relating to weather patterns and farmer losses, to build products that cater to various risks.But getting farmers on board has never been easy, Goslinga told TechCrunch. According to her, Pula has understood not to sell insurance directly to small-scale farmers, because they can suffer from optimism bias. “Some think a climate disaster wouldn’t hit their farms for a particular season; hence, they don’t ask for insurance initially. But if they witness any of these climate risks during the season, they would want to get insurance, which is counterproductive to Pula,” said the founder in a phone call.

Pula, a Kenyan insurtech startup that specialises in digital and agricultural insurance to derisk millions of smallholder farmers across Africa, has closed a Series A investment of $6 million.The round was led by Pan-African early-stage venture capital firm, TLcom Capital, with participation from nonprofit Women’s World Banking. The raise comes after Pula closed $1 million in seed investment from Rocher Participations with support from Accion Venture Lab, Omidyar Network and several angel investors in 2018.

AgroCenta has hosted and provided over 500 farmer engagement sessions and trainings since launch. Skilled professionals deliver these sessions in farming communities and methodologies are continuously updated to reflect state-of-theart farming practices.

FarmDrive - EWB Canada

FarmDrive uses data analytics to connect smallholder farmers with financial institutions and credit, enabling crops and farmers to flourish. And all through a mobile phone.

FarmDrive uses data analytics and mobile technology to create financial profiles for farmers through a credit scoring model. When the financial institutions can view comprehensive profiles of a farmer’s economic performance, they are more likely to approve loans.By unlocking access to credit, FarmDrive enables smallholder farmers to access: Loans to purchase vital tools and assets. Insurance to bolster to protect against the natural seasonal vulnerabilities of farm work. Comprehensive financial profiles of their farming operations: a useful resource in scaling to service multiple partners or larger supply chains.

we are definitely improving the financial livelihood of smallholder farmers through fair trade. Many smallholder farmers are paid less than $1 a day and our objective is to increase it to $4 a day by 2020.

Our pilot with Pula revealed that most data sets in the countries where Pula works still focus on larger farm sizes, not the very small farms of poorer, vulnerable farmers, which reduces variation in the model. Additionally, if yield data are not available for a long period or across climatic regions, the predictability of the model is further reduced. This innovation holds tremendous promise for inclusion but will need space for experimentation to perfect.

By eliminating exploitative buying from the value chain, smallholder farmers are able to become financially independent, get enough money to take care of their families and needs thereby alleviating them from poverty

Most smallholder Kenyan farmers are excluded from the financial system because they do not have a satisfactory credit profile. Without access to formal credit systems, they use alternative systems providing credit at high-interest rates, which, in addition, are not well suited to support their farm and off-farm activities.Having done this, the FarmDrive team met banks and organisations financing smallholder farmers to better understand the reasons for exclusion. They discovered that it is often the lack of information that locks farmers out of the financial system. They decided to try to fill this gap by collecting information from farmers, and analysing the data obtained, establishing their credit profile. Once this is done, farmers can apply for a loan via the platform FarmDrive.

African smallholder farmers face a recurring problem of access to finance and credit. Financial institutions, for their part, do not have access to many potential customers, considered as too risky. Young Kenyan computer scientists have developed FarmDrive, an application that aims to promote access to credit and financial services for smallholder farmers. banks remain to be won over, but the project is on track.

 AgroCenta’s main competitors are Esoko (www.esoko.com), FarmerLine (www.farmerline.co) and Farm Radio (www.farmradio.org). These 3 competitors are “information-based” only, delivering market prices, weather information and extension advisory services via SMS to farmers.

AgroCenta is an agricultural technology platform that provides an end-to-end solution for smallholder farmers in the post-harvest value chain from farm to market, leveraging on technology to create impact. AgroCenta focuses on 4 key areas in the agricultural value chain namely market linkage, access to real time market information, access to on-demand trucks and logistics services and financial inclusion platform all targeted at the smallholder farmer

Mukuru enables our customers to move money around the world. We use the latest mobile and web-based technologies to deliver the safest and most efficient experience possible. But that’s just half the story. To really understand us, you need to know the why behind all we do. We exist as a remittances business to empower migrants typically excluded from mainstream financial services, to move money in a convenient, safe and affordable way. We know that every customer has a story; just as we do. So whether sending money home for school fees, the purchasing of seeds and farming equipment, hospital bills, rent or groceries, we are passionate about making each story end well.

Mukuru enables our customers to move money around the world. We use the latest mobile and web-based technologies to deliver the safest and most efficient experience possible. But that’s just half the story. To really understand us, you need to know the why behind all we do. We exist as a remittances business to empower migrants typically excluded from mainstream financial services, to move money in a convenient, safe and affordable way. We know that every customer has a story; just as we do. So whether sending money home for school fees, the purchasing of seeds and farming equipment, hospital bills, rent or groceries, we are passionate about making each story end well.

If you would have told me 10 years ago that I would be running a company that does agriculture insurance, I would not have believed you. Agriculture has not been an area that people have invested in across Africa. Many of my cousins and childhood friends still work on their farms, but they are reluctant to invest, putting in only what they can afford to lose.The reason they don’t invest is simple. The chance of them losing their money due to the vagaries of the weather is huge. Working in insurance got me to understand about probabilities of loss early on — probabilities that cause our continent to be food insecure.

Pula’s mission is to give farmers confidence by providing risk mitigation. Our solutions protect a farmer’s investment by pairing it with insurance. We build business cases to persuade Fortune 500 companies, seed and fertilizer suppliers, lending institutions, and governments in Africa, that embedded insurance will help deliver better results for both businesses and food security.

This funding was secured from UK charity Shell Foundation, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), AV Ventures and Rabo Foundation. “This is a significant milestone for AgroCenta, having the support of leading institutions, particularly with the COVID-19 backdrop, underlining the strength of AgroCenta and the importance of its mission. The demand for agricultural raw materials from offtakers in the brewery, manufacturing and consumer sector is increasing exponentially because of the easing of the COVID-19 restrictions that were put in place by the government of Ghana, hence this capital injection will help to secure purchases at fair and transparent prices from smallholders — a much needed lifeline for many who are at the proverbial bottom of the pyramid”. Francis Obirikorang, AgroCenta’s CEO and Co-Founder Michael Ocansey said while highlighting the importance and criticality of this investment.

Michael Tome Business Reporter Lands, Agriculture, Water, Climate and Rural Resettlement Ministry says it highly upholds technological innovations that seek to develop agriculture productivity.This follows advances made by Cassava Smartech’s EcoFarmer to digitally enhance farming tips through mobile platform, which is a one-stop solution platform that gives farming tips, location-specific weather updates, weekly agriculture commodity market prices and financial services.

FarmDrive has also partnered with the ACP-EU Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Co-operation (CTA) to build the capacity of Kenyan young farmers and stakeholders and help them access finance.

Farm Drive has a wide variety of partners including: investors (Engineers without Borders and Mercy Corps); capacity building (Open Capital advisors, ACRE Africa -to create insurance products); and financial institutions (Musoni Kenya).

FarmDrive catalyzes financial institutions to lend more to smallholder farmers by de-risking the process through clear and transparent records. Farmer clients of FarmDrive are benefiting from financial awareness, financial management tools, farming-related recommendations, access to finance and links to profitable markets.