Cream Of The Crop

Food is the future and these proactive startups are focused on shifting agricultural practices to prepare for what is to come.

- Jessica Spiro

Agriculture has always been a core of Africa's economic viability. And where it's estimated that 140 million people in Africa face acute food insecurity, the continent's ability to produce food efficiently is vital. As many individual countries wrestle with inadequate component governments, there has been a spate of proactive startups focused on revolutionizing the food system across Africa. From a continent-spanning online marketplace changing the way African farmers do business to a technology platform focused on producing cultivated meat alternatives and a company using technology to convert arid desertland into agricultural areas, these are the firms showing the way in foodtech in Africa.

'Just like the Nile River was pivotal...

Farming and selling produce can be inefficient and costly for farmers in Africa, despite being one of society's oldest practices. Nile, a B2B marketplace, wants to change this. By connecting farmers directly with commercial produce buyers, Nile is reshaping produce trading while empowering farmers across southern Africa.

Founded in 2020 in South Africa by Louis de Kock, Eugene Roodt, and Rick Kleinhans, whose collective experience spans Amazon, JP Morgan and Luno, Nile came from the idea that tech can modernize agricultural trade.

"In 2020, farmers were still distributing their products in the same way my grandfather did in the 1950s, which was surprising given how much has changed since then, both tech and logistics," De Kock reflects. Seeing these outdated distribution methods encouraged them to explore tech solutions, resulting in an online marketplace.