Agtech: The Next Mainstay of Nigeria’s Tech Ecosystem
The twenty-first century is the age of ubiquitous and miniature technology. Facilitated by the internet, young, inventive and highly intelligent individuals have brought new meaning and new processes to how businesses and interpersonal interactions are conducted.
Millennials and the Generation Z can hardly imagine how life was in the days when most correspondences were done by post, facsimile and telephone. Today, communication is instant — at the push of a button. Multimillion dollar deals are made across continents in boardrooms connected by Skype. Payments are made with an ever-increasing coterie of payment apps like Paypal, Stripe, Flutterwave and Paystack. Now with LinkedIn you could know the finest details of your company CEO’s career trajectory from his time in college to his PhD thesis. The social media brought about a revolution in person to person and group communication.
It is impressive that Nigeria has been up to date in the globalization of everything — the interconnectedness of the world. While Nigerian entrepreneurs have interests in different aspects of the internet economy from social media (Lagbook, defunct) to ecommerce (Konga, MallforAfrica), to movies (Iroko), music streaming (Spinlet, iRoking) and education (Preplabs, uLesson), it is easy to see that Fintech and Agtech are the big playgrounds for the who-is-who in the vibrant techscape of Nigeria.
From the grandmasters Interswitch to Remita, Paga, Flutterwave, Paystack and Sanwo among many others, the Nigerian fintech space is quite robust and in good hands. The main banks, telcos, and ecommerce companies have all developed their own payment systems competing and sometimes collaborating with the tech startups. The fintech sector is well into billions of dollars in value and volume of daily and monthly transaction. Fintech is considered the flagship of Nigeria’s technology firmament.
However, with over 50 known companies in the arena, agriculture technology is the crown prince of the technology revolution in Nigeria. While it is still impossible to put a collective value to the agtech business in Nigeria, its impact is quite substantial.
Farmcrowdy is the first recognized entrant into the industry. The company connects existing farmers with agriculture investors. Established at a time when the political sing-song was agriculture, Farmcrowdy read the handwriting on the wall correctly. It created a ‘cool’ platform where blue collar middle class workers who did not want to leave their jobs to get hands-on on the farm could still make that needed extra income by investing in established smallholder farmers with a slice of the profit. The model has worked and the company is doing great numbers: over 25000 farmers, over 16000 acres of farmland, active in 14 states.
Buoyed by the success of Farmcrowdy or simply just arriving late to the market, new entrants have raised the profile of the niche. Some of the most visible are Farmkart, Porkmoney, Porkvest, FarmKonnect and Crop2Cash.
The agtech phenomenon follows a trend. Agriculture employs about 30% of the workforce (more than any other sector of the economy). It is also the only sector where civil servants are allowed to be employed while on government payroll, it is therefore not a surprise that the new era is being heavily imprinted upon by the old.
Just like the rest of the internet, there is no regulation, for this subsector, it is therefore a free-for-all at the moment. However, there have not been any known complaints by patrons of these companies. It is necessary though to state, Caveat Emptor.
Most tech companies are known for heavy spending on research and development. It is this characteristic that has propelled giants like Apple, Google and Amazon to the Olympian heights that they have attained. Nigerian tech companies are beginning to hold their own as some of the best places to work in the country but the jury is out as on their R&D spending.
With the preponderance of agtech companies in the country, research in partnership with flagship organisations like the International Institute of Tropical Agriculture (IITA) and Universities of Agriculture can be of immense value to Nigerian farmers and agri-investors. Innovations therefrom can be propagated to the world for bigger gains.
As technology has changed the way things are done around the world, properly situating the era of globalization in this early period of the century, technology in Nigeria can change the way business is conducted for good by bringing the good qualities of youth and innovation to age-old institutions and professions like agriculture. With a population estimated to reach 400 million by 2050, it is imperative that we should be able to feed ourselves, sustainably. With today’s agtech companies providing the leadership that is required, the country’s quest to feed itself and the rest of Africa might just be a walk in the park.
