Interview: Crowd Farm Africa

Crowd Farm Africa, is a Kenyan startup thats using technology to transform African agriculture by promoting shareholder farming and addressing value chain gaps via crowd-funding.

According to Samuel Wachieni, the CEO, Crowd Farm Africa uses a multifunctional online platform to enable different people from different works of life to easily invest in large scale farming projects which are centrally and professionally managed to take advantage of economies of scale. With Crowd Farm Africa, land owners are able to lease their land for large commercial crowd-farming projects; small holder farmers can join out-grower programmes to ensure consistency of production and access to reliable and profitable markets for their produce; and buyers have a reliable supply of high quality farm produce and agro-processing raw materials at competitive prices.

When asked what inspired him to start Crowd Farm Africa, Sammy had this to say. "Africa is becoming a market of global scale - its population, currently in excess of one billion, is expected to double over the next 25 years, and by 2040, Africa’s working-age population will be larger than either China or India. On the other hand, Africa is urbanizing more rapidly than any other continent, with its urban population expanding by 3.5% per year.

The question remains, who will feed these people? Already Africa imports close to $50 billion worth of food every year, yet the continent is home to 65% of the world’s most arable land? African agriculture, from production to marketing and the entire value chain is extremely inefficient and pathetically underfinanced. As a result, we lose very important social and economic opportunities to more efficient countries.

Samuel believes that, promoting crowd-funded agriculture will solve this challenge, and he is positioning Crowd Farm Africa to play a significant role in this process. Crowd farming will ensure a steady supply of agricultural products and an increase in returns to producers which will generate thousands of jobs, reduce poverty and ensure rapid economic growth in the continent.

Since its inception, Crowd Farm Africa has made numerous strides towards developing, testing and proofing their business model. The Crowd Farm Africa online platform has already attracted 135 users who are testing the services and the business model. After the testing phase is completed, the start-up will undertake proposed projects starting with a 100 acres of crowd funded red onions farming in Kenya.

Of course, there are numerous challenges. For starters, Africans are used to the small holder farming model with the average farm size being 5 acres and they are yet to conceptualize how a shareholding farming model would work. Also, the lack of flexible agricultural insurance schemes has caused many would be users to be skeptical. The incidence of 'ponzi' schemes which have defrauded many Kenyans in the past has greatly affected peoples' trust and confidence in participating in joint investment plans. There is also the problem of inadequate funds for early stage operations. The biggest challenge however, is proving that the business model is not only viable but better and more profitable to the target users in the long run.

Crowd Farm Africa is aggressively working towards resolving these issues by forging partnerships with credible players including venture capitalists to raise needed funds. The startup is negotiating with different insurance schemes to develop a dedicated insurance scheme for their users while also lobbying the government to establish a farmer’s insurance scheme. Plans are in progress to get listed under the Growth Enterprise Market Segment (GEMS) in the Nairobi Securities Exchange, which is designed to offer a regulatory and trading environment to meet the need of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Kenya. This will help address any credibility and trust concerns their users may have.

Sammy is a trained Project Planning & Management officer who worked in the non-profit sector for over 7 years where he raised over a million dollars in project funds, used to implement numerous health, education and leadership projects in Kenya. His desire to uncover the root causes of poverty and discover sustainable strategies towards addressing poverty in Africa led him to the conclusion that, though aid maybe helpful sometimes, the recipients would prefer to be in a position to take care of their own needs. According to Sammy, "This is a strong human instinct associated with self worth and dignity".

Sammy's vision is to transform African agriculture using technology. He has great faith in the continent’s agricultural potential to feed itself and be part of the global food basket. He envisons that crowd farming will ensure that the continent moves away from exporting raw farm produce to other countries only to buy processed products at exorbitant prices and trigger the industrial revolution that is yet to happen in Africa.

Crowd Farm Africa plans to replicate in at least 10 African countries include Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, Mozambique, Ghana, South Africa, Morocco, Uganda, and Egypt. "In selecting these countries, we have considered numerous strategic factors including population, location within the continent and ease of accessing other countries, ease of doing business, available arable land mass and infrastructure development." The startup believes these countries, representing the four main business blocks of the continent i.e Northern, Southern, Eastern and Western Africa, provide the greatest growth opportunities with the potential of serving over 630 million people; more than half of the continent's population.

Crowd Farm Africas has received many accolades since its inception. In 2015, it was selected among the most innovative startups in the flagship edition of the Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme. In the same year, Crowd Farm Africa was also a semi finalist at the African Entrepreneurship Awards.

In the coming days, Crowd Farm Africa is set to position itself as a leader in promoting and managing crowd funded agriculture in the continent. The startup hopes to scale and be replicated in at least 10 African countries in the next 5 years.

When asked what he would say to struggling social entrepreneurs, Sammy had this to say. "We are the generation that will transform this continent and we owe it to ourselves to do that. For us to do this, we’ve got to believe in ourselves and convince ourselves that somehow, what we are working on makes sense even when others think otherwise. This will keep us going during the early stages of the journey when many people are skeptical about new ideas. Remember, every great idea started out as blasphemy.”

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