Agriculture crowdfunding platform Farmcrowdy has secured $1m in a seed funding round from a selection of international investors.
Backers to the round include Cox Enterprises, Techstars Ventures, Social Capital, Hallett Capital and Right-Side Capital. Among these investment firms, several angel investors contributed to the seed.
The platform helps Nigerians with supporting agriculture by enabling them sponsor a farm cycle, which could last three to five months for poultry or nine months for cassava, among other options. The sponsors funding goes towards securing land, engaging the farmer, planting seeds, insuring the farmer and produce, supporting the harvest, and then selling the products.
Sponsors receive around 40 per cent of the profit from the harvest, the farmer also receives 40 per cent and Farmcrowdy picks up the remaining profits.
Capital will be used to support the company expand its processes to 20 states in Nigeria and 4,000 additional small-scale farmers. Farmcrowdy is also hoping to engage with its 20,000 new followers and farm sponsors on its platform.
Farmcrowdy co-founder and CEO Onyeka Akumah said, “It will allow us to build on our earlier traction as we continue to introduce Nigerians to this exciting new category of partnering with farmers for impact and return. We are happy to amplify our work with the farmers across new states in Nigeria while empowering local farmers by hiring more agriculture technology experts to impart knowledge to ensure best practice in farming methods.”
Earlier in the year, Nigeria-based Lidya closed a $1.25m seed funding round led by Accion Venture Lab. The company is a small business lender, which uses algorithms to support small companies build up credit scores to enable them to receive financing.
Last month, The Bahrain Economic Development Board and FinTech Consortium launched a new FinTech hub to help support and build startups in the Middle East and Africa.
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