AFRICA – Village Capital has named nine startups from across the continent for the Agriculture Africa accelerator, which will offer two winning ventures US$50,000 each in funding.
Village Capital runs a host of accelerators across Africa using its innovative peer-selection method,
Village Capital, which invited applications for the program from Agritech startups earlier in June, said the Agriculture Africa 2019 is focused on solutions that improve outcomes for small farmers and address food security issues.
This year, the Agriculture Africa Accelerator programme has partnered Small Foundation and Ceniarth, the latter of which has committed US$50,000 to each of the top two winning, peer-selected ventures.
The programme has been designed to assist agri-tech startups that can provide granular solutions to help smallholder farmers.
The nine startups selected from 7 African countries by Village Capital for the Agriculture Africa Accelerator Program.
Akellobanker, which enables farmers to purchase inputs on credit alongside with Agro Supply, a mobile layaway product were selected from Uganda.
Two Kenyan startups; Capture, a workflow streamlining solution provider and Raino Tech4Impact data platform were also selected.
In addition, Senegalese online platform for fish products Aywajieune as well as Ghanaian agri-investment platform Complete Farmer were selected to join the accelerator program.
Zambian eMsika, an inputs e-commerce startup, Nigerian ReelFruit which is a dried fruit processing company, and Rwandan irrigation services firm Volta Irrigation.
The regional manager for Sub-Saharan Africa at Village Capital, Adedana Ashebir, said “We’re really excited about this agriculture cohort, which includes some incredibly 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,”
