Public Funding for Farm Africa Limited

Agriculture in Africa _has_ to be invested in to ensure food is secure for the next generations. Africa will account for 96% of future global population growth and in the African market, 70-80% of food grown for domestic use and for export comes from smallholding farms of less than 10 hectares. However, smallholdings in Africa produce on average 25% of what is achieved on equivalent commercial scale farms in the same area. This demonstrates that smallholder agriculture contains the most latent growth potential, and is certainly the answer to our impending food crisis, but that potential is not being realised. Organisations, such as Farm Africa (FA), have demonstrated that access to services can improve smallholder farm productivity by more than 65% (Farm Africa, 2020). However, despite this potential, access to services within sub-Saharan Africa is extremely sparse and fragmented ([GSMA 2020][0]). This lack of access to technical knowledge and business support perpetuates low farm productivity and enduring cycles of poverty. Climate Edge (CE) is solving this problem by building a SaaS platform that allows providers to digitise and scale services within emerging markets. Without having to write a single line of code, providers can augment their in-person services to be delivered effectively in a digital format. In this project Climate Edge will expand the availability of the platform so that it can be used to deliver bundles of interacting, complimentary services across all the countries where Farm Africa are active; Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, DRC and Ethiopia. Farm Africa's service team will use this platform to digitise and scale a select set of their most impactful services, including agricultural extension, business advisory, finance and diversification training. These services will be delivered through a new AI powered SMS chatbot interface and enable Farm Africa to scale their operations - reaching new farmers and driving holistic improvements at the farm level. Through this partnership we will deliver a new suite services to strengthen to the connection between UK business and African smallholder agriculture. This will go a long way to our goal of achieving global food security. [0]: https://www.gsma.com/r/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/GSMA-Agritech-Digital-Agriculture-Maps.pdf