In its path to improve the growth of funding farmers, thus, making them accessible to funding and buyers in Nigeria and beyond its borders, Farmgate Africa was launched by Farmcrowdy Group on Tuesday, April 2, 2019, at its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria.
Farmgate Africa is a new subsidiary of the agro-business platform that is leveraging on technology, to improve and effectively further the course of the agro-trading market place for agricultural commodities on the continent of Africa.
Kenneth Obiajulu, Co-Founder & Managing Director of Farmgate Africa, who led the launch, remarked on how the platform, is bridging the gap between rural farmers and the market place, by providing major processors and international buyers, the opportunity to purchase commodities directly from local farming clusters, through technology.
“Our business model is one that brings the farmers closer to the processors and off-takers by eliminating several layers of intermediaries. By doing this, Farmgate optimizes market access to African farmers and also improves their income by, at least, 30%”, Obiajulu further remarked.
With the intention of bridging the gap, caused by limited market access to ensure a smooth agricultural value chain, Farmgate Africa, also, intends to create a platform for building relationships with local farmers.
This would enhance major processors to place orders on agricultural produce, without the stress of passing through a series of intermediaries.
Farmgate Africa platform assists with the aggregation of farm produce, from smallholder farmers and simultaneously taking a critical look at the unique specifications of the buyers on specifications, while also ensuring the delivery of the produce or commodity to major processors, or, rather, the international buyer’s agents.
Over, the next two years, Farmgate Africa, through the operational expertise and wealth of experience provided by the Farmcrowdy Group, will focus on funds deployment, cutting across various market points.
This will be centred on the processing of beef and developing aggregation capacities across maize, soya beans, sorghum, and dried-split ginger, for markets beyond the Nigerian border, UAE and the UK inclusive, among others on the list.
The Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy, Onyeka Akumah was not left out, as he added his two cents. “Launching Farmgate Africa as one of the subsidiaries in the Farmcrowdy Group gives us huge joy. With the expectations placed on us, to continue to innovate and build new solutions, driven by technology, to finance agriculture”
According to the Founder, the agro-business platform has received a significant number of feedback from farmers and major agro buyers.
The latter requires to fund market access to agro-commodities, but an unstructured market place has served as a setback for them.
The introduction of Farmgate Africa appears to be the solution to this market need.
“Farmgate Africa is our response to this need. As we launch Farmgate Africa today, we have tirelessly worked for the past 6 months with the team, to build relationships with blue-chip companies, in and outside Nigeria, extending our relationships with thousands of farmers networks, across the country and now, we are set to launch, to the market, with a strong team behind the idea”, Onyeka stressed.
Overview of Farmgate Africa
Farmers on the local scene have the capacity to produce agricultural commodities, all-year-round, but they are faced with critical challenges; productivity issues, post-harvest losses, access to finance and markets, etc.
These challenges stifle the growth of agriculture across African countries. From the market access point, local farmers have the capacity to produce millions of metric tons in commodities; however, challenges exist in selling them to international buyers directly, without getting stuck on wide margins with middlemen.
Same also appears to be the challenge of the major processors, who find it difficult to purchase raw materials from local farmers.
The platform is, therefore, an agritech solution, bridging the gap between farmers, market processors and access to the markets.
As a subsidiary of Farmcrowdy Group, a pioneer in the digital agricultural space, Farmgate Africa, is set to bring solutions to the market access challenges, faced by farmers across Africa.
