FinTech Company Aims to Address Challenges in Ag Economy
Developed platform providing digital marketplace for farmers, traders, processors
Cellulant is a pan-African FinTech company that created Agrikore as a solution for Africa’s agricultural sector. Agrikore provides a digital marketplace for farmers, traders and processors. The platform enables a transparent and secure view of the markets for all the participants of the agriculture value chain including transporters, certifiers, financial institutions, and de-risking agencies.
Through Agrikore, Cellulant aims to address the root causes of the broken agricultural economy in Africa, including market fragmentation, low trust levels, market access, low levels of digitization, and financial exclusion. Cellulant is partnering with Mastercard Foundation’s Young Africa Works for a 5-year program that will enable 720, 000 young people, especially young women, across Nigeria to access work through agribusiness.
Cellulant believes that creating effective market linkages within agriculture will unlock the job potential and work opportunities in the sector. The agricultural sector will contribute significantly towards providing work opportunities for the 7 million young women and men that Young Africa Works aims to impact in Nigeria.
“I almost died of boredom before I joined Agrikore in 2020. Since then, we have been able to deliver about 160 metric tons of rice paddy to two rice mills in Kano. We have almost perfected a rice produce line to feed the new Coscharis Rice mill in Ibaji LGA. Our primary constraint remains capital. In our market, cash is king. Now we are able to buy farm produce directly from the farm gate reducing the need for farmers to incur travelling costs. We can also buy produce from a larger number of farmers who deliver their harvest straight to our community aggregation points. At our aggregation points, produce is weighed and graded before being loaded onto haulage trucks and taken straight to the mills. With cash in hand, we are more organised and more profitable. This synergy has given us the strength we need to hit the ground running. We will deliver.”
Alfred, a Nigerian rice farmer from Lokoja, Kogi State, Nigeria
