News in brief:
Nigerian agritech startup CoAmana secured $500,000 from Village Capital to expand its digital platform, which connects farmers to markets, financing, and resources, aiming to improve agricultural resilience in Africa.
CoAmana, an agricultural startup based in Nigeria, received a funding of $500,000 from Village Capital, according to a news report.
The startup was one of the beneficiaries of the nonprofit’s Reducing Inequalities Investment Facility, the other being Aquarech, a Keyan-based B2B and B2C company that offers fish farmers a buy now pay later solution for fish feed and received $350,000.
Earlier in 2024, the investment facility had also given $350,000 to Crop2Cash, which is also an agricultural-focused company based in Nigeria that offers smallholders access to banking, credit, agricultural inputs, warehousing, and insurance.
One news article on the story mentioned that the fund has so far invested $1.6 million in four startups, the fourth being a Bangladesh-based startup, called AponTech, that enables factory workers to access credit, and discounted household essentials.
CoAmana was founded in 2018 by Hafsah Jumare and it provides farmers with a digital management product that allows them sell products, access loans, and see live market prices as well as purchase requests.
Farmers who are users are promised improved productivity as they can better manage financial risks related to drought conditions as they get to purchase drought-resistant seeds and access information to best practices.
The startup had received a grant from GSMA in November 2022 to onboard 5,000 farmers on its Amana Market platform. Since then, it has added about 10,000 farmers to its platform and this includes more than 1,300 women. In addition, there are over 250 suppliers and sales agents that use the company’s platform to acquire produce.
According Jumare, the ultimate goal is getting more farmers across Africa to adopt digital technology in their strive for resilience.
“What we are seeing today is tragic; the floods, the droughts, the short rains and the security crisis that is emerging from these occurrences. We can neither think slow nor small because the world is already late to act… we will continue to employ inclusive digital technology to accelerate the evolution of agriculture markets in Africa towards more resilience,” she said.
