Off the Beaten Track

Hi, Hannatu here,

Just four countries account for 80% of all African agritech funding.

Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, Ghana.

These are the great watering holes. They drink up 80% of all African agritech funding.

Everyone else? They're scrambling for the 20%.

But even on this main trail, Kenya is king.

Kenyan agritech doesn't just get a piece of the pie; it takes a massive chunk. In 2024, agritech funding in Kenya still jumped 45%.

There’s one problem though.

It's creating an echo chamber.

If every "solution" for African farmers is coded in a Nairobi high-rise, it’s not an African solution. It’s a Kenyan one. 

And the rest of the continent becomes an afterthought.

But some startups are proving innovation doesn't need a Nairobi zip code. 

They're building where the farmers actually are, and their proximity is becoming their advantage.

To understand it, we need to know about…

Walk into any African tech conference. 

The pitch decks all mention Lagos or Nairobi. Investors meet in the same hotels. Accelerators operate from the same buildings.

Even global tech giants pick these cities. Microsoft, Google, Meta, all build their African headquarters in the same handful of capitals.

Economically, it's a closed loop. Investors want their portfolio companies close. And talent follows the companies to the cities. 

But there's a fatal flaw in this strategy: the customers aren't there.

Agriculture doesn't happen in a fintech hub. It happens in villages three hours away, down roads that turn to mud when it rains.

Maren Hald Bjorgum, Chief Communications Officer at Emata, a Ugandan agricultural fintech, sees this disconnect daily.

Emata, a fintech for farmers, made a strategic decision: keep headquarters in Kampala, even as they expand.

"Our identity is Ugandan," Maren explains. "Moving somewhere else would take away key parts of our success."

That success is built on solving a problem the big banks ignore. 

About 70% of Ugandans are farmers. 

But to a traditional bank, they're ghosts. 

These people have no credit records, no land titles, and no way to prove they're a good bet.

Emata figured out the "hack": a farmer's buying records are their salary statements.

They partner with cooperatives and exporters who buy from the same farmers every season. Those records get digitized and fed into the Emata algorithm.

When a farmer applies for a loan through WhatsApp, the system processes everything based on their delivery history. 

Consistent farmers get approved. One-time sellers don't.

So far, Emata has reached over 100,000 farmers.

This model only works because Emata intimately understands Ugandan value chains. They didn't just fly in for a "rural safari."

"You can travel," Maren acknowledges. "You can visit rural areas. But you won't get the exposure you have if you actually live in the country you're building for."

For Emata, it’s important to be…

Building "in the bush" forces a different kind of discipline. 

You can't make assumptions from an air-conditioned office. You have to go find out.

Emata takes this to heart.

They force their developers to spend time as booking agents, actually interfacing with farmers using the system.

"It's fine if it works on your laptop in the office in Kampala," Maren says. "But does it actually work on a mountainside, in a village, off the grid almost?"

Those field visits generate "wake-up calls." They expose blind spots before they become critical bugs.

This proximity shapes product decisions that other companies miss.

A solution built for Lagos doesn't account for how agriculture works in Malawi. 

Kenyan assumptions about mobile money penetration don't apply in Zimbabwe. 

Egyptian startup models will assume infrastructure that simply doesn't exist in rural Uganda.

A coffee farmer in Uganda faces different problems (needing financing for a 3-4 year maturation period) than a maize farmer in Kenya (needing quick access to tractors before the rain).

Emata’s loan system uses WhatsApp because that’s what works in rural Uganda. 

But they pair this digital automation with an analog layer: training the co-op agents who already know the farmers to help with registration.

"You can't just do one or the other," Maren explains. "Then you're either inefficient or you don't reach the people you need to.” 

But combined, it's the secret sauce.

Building outside the main watering holes comes with real costs.

When Maren talks to other Ugandan founders, the feedback is consistent: "This year's been shit. Funding is shit, growth is shit."

Emata got lucky.

They applied to the Norsken Accelerator in Stockholm in 2022, got accepted, and spent three months there.

That connection led to introductions across East Africa's investor network. 

They raised their seed round in 2023 with investors based in Nairobi and Kigali.

Unfortunately, most agritech startups in the "other 80%" watch their counterparts in the big cities raise millions while they struggle just to get a meeting.

The challenge is creating sustainable funding environments outside the Big 4. 

This requires patient capital willing to back teams in "secondary" markets.

It also requires proving that local knowledge creates better products. 

Emata's 30-50% productivity increase for its borrowers shows proximity matters. 

Farmers using their loans see real yield improvements because the product was built by people who understand their actual constraints.

Emata is growing to Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Rwanda, but keeping its base camp in Kampala. 

They aren't alone in proving this model works:

All three are tracking the same truth: you can't understand the herd by just flying over it in a helicopter. 

You have to get on the ground. 

They're not just "visiting" from a regional hub; they've set up camp right in the middle of the action.

As this agritech landscape evolves, knowing every rock and ravine of your local territory might just be the ultimate survival skill, more valuable than just being close to the big-city watering holes.

Farming is local. The rules of survival change from one valley to the next. 

The winning tech won't be designed in a glass tower. It'll be the code that’s been field-tested on a muddy mountainside, because that's where the real problems live.

What do you think? 

Are the best solutions built near the VCs, or out in the villages? 

👉🏾Tell me what you think.

Cheers,