Digital Agriculture in LMICs - 5 Sep #27
Small Foundation, MEST call for African agritechs, Gates’ Grand Challenges to fund AI agri projects, Islamic crop insurance launched in Pakistan
28/08/23
MEST Africa Challenge calls for startups
MEST Africa Challenge, a start-up pitch competition organised by Meltwater Foundation in partnership with Absa Bank, has opened applications for the Mest Africa Challenge Startup Pitch Competition. Founded in 2008 by the Meltwater Foundation, MEST Africa is a Pan-African training programme, seed fund and incubator. Early-stage technology startups, including agritechs, that are operational in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal, Kenya, or South Africa, and have at least six months of recurring revenue, are invited to participate. The winner will receive an equity investment of USD 50,000 and access to MEST Africa’s global community and networks. Among previous winners is Tanzania’s Kilimo Fresh, a B2B E-commerce platform connecting farmers with buyers of produce. There is time to apply until 9 October. Finalists will be announced on 27 November, after the selection of the top five startups (one from each country).
30/08/23
New fund targets agritechs in Tanzania, Zambia, Morocco, Uganda
US based investment firm Black Ostrich Ventures has launched a USD 20 million fund to invest in sectors including agritech in Tanzania, Zambia, Morocco, and Uganda. According to reports, besides agritech, other sectors of interest are cleantech, supply chain, and edtech. Check sizes of between USD 50,000 and 200,000 will be available for investees, with Black Ostrich also offering a follow-on investment of up to USD 1 million for companies that reach Series A. The intention of the newly created fund is to support start-ups in fast growing sectors outside Africa's “big four” markets of Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and South Africa. Together, these four markets account for over 90% of all startup investment in the region.
30/08/23
Small Foundation calls for early-stage agri/fintech innovators in Africa
Small Foundation is calling for applications to its Emerald Africa Financing Facility (EAFF). The Facility aims to support early-stage digital agriculture innovators enabling access to finance for rural SMEs. EAFF will offer loans of USD 50,000-250,000 to selected agritechs whose solutions provide credit to SMEs in Sub-Saharan Africa. The funding is targeted at agritech/fintech startups that have undertaken a pilot and achieved product-market fit and are at pre-seed or seed stage. Small Foundation is a philanthropic foundation based in Ireland that is working to catalyse and scale income-generating opportunities for people living in extreme poverty in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Applications are open here until 31 December, 2023.
31/08/23
100M World Bank project will support data-driven agriculture in Cameroon
After announcing it last September, the government of Cameroon has officially launched the USD 100 million “Project to Accelerate Digital Transformation in Cameroon” (PATNuC) to support the development of the digital ecosystem and bridge the digital gap in rural areas. The initiative has three objectives: to support strategy, policy, and regulation for digital inclusion; to improve connectivity; and to facilitate the implementation of data-driven solutions in the agricultural sector. These solutions will target smallholder farmers including pastoralists. The plan is to also leverage electronic vouchers for input subsidies and to engage cooperatives, producers' organisations and associations by awarding them with matching grants to support the adoption of digital agriculture innovations by agritech startups. PATNuC is funded by the World Bank’s International Development Association (IDA) and implemented in collaboration by the Ministries of Posts and Telecommunications (MINPOSTEL), of Agriculture and Rural Development (MINADER) and of Livestock, Fisheries and Animal Industries (MINEPIA). IDA supports the world’s poorest countries by providing grants and low to zero-interest loans for projects and programs.
02/09/23
Digital Dera and Salaam Takaful to provide Islamic crop insurance to Pakistani farmers
Pakistan’s Islamic insurance provider and insurtech Salaam Takaful has partnered with Digital Dera, a smart village initiative in Pakistan. The objective of the partnership is to provide parametric crop insurance to smallholder farmers through Salaam Crop Takaful (Islamic insurance). Digital Dera is a smart village network with the objective of connecting villages to the internet and digitalising smallholder agriculture for better crop yields and market access. It was established and launched in 2020 in the region of Punjab by Agriculture Republic, a food security policy and tech start-up/think tank, and it is supported by US-based non-profit advocacy organisation Internet Society, as well as Pakistan’s national telecommunication company PTCL, Accountability Lab, and Hayat Farms.
04/09/23
Deep dive: Gates’ Grand Challenges to fund AI-enabled digital ag projects
At the start of August, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation announced 48 grant recipients of its latest Global Grand Challenges initiative. In this latest iteration, the Grand Challenges is looking to build an evidence base for the use of artificial intelligence (AI) large language models in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) to improve the livelihood and well-being of communities globally.
A closer look at grantees shows that three of them are focused on digital agriculture. The three projects are: an integrated AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and a Swahili chatbot for early disease detection on maize for farmers in Tanzania (by Sokoine University of Agriculture); a ChatGPT solution for cross-lingual, localised and targeted agricultural advisory for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa (by Makerere University, Uganda); a GPT-enabled AI bot that delivers information on latest government financial schemes for rural customers in India (by the Indian Institute of Science). The findings of projects will be shared at the Grand Challenges Annual Meeting in Dakar, Senegal, this October.
The foundation received 1,300+ proposals, of which 80% were from LMICs. Each recipient will receive up to USD 100,000 to advance its research project, for a total of USD 5 million in grants. The Grand Challenges is a family of initiatives fostering innovation to solve pressing global health and development problems.