ABA Editorial · Jun 7, 2025 · 13 min read
African agrifoodtech funding peaked at USD 776 million in 2022 and has contracted to USD 192 million in 2024, a retreat of more than 75 percent. Meanwhile, African food imports approach USD 50 billion annually and 30 million smallholder farmers remain largely outside formal finance. This report synthesizes where the sector sits at the start of 2026, which operators have captured the majority of funding, and what the structural conditions look like for the next generation of African agritech startups.
The African agritech story in early 2026 is a story of tension between structural opportunity and cyclical stress. The opportunity is unambiguous. African nations import approximately USD 50 billion in food annually, a figure the World Bank has warned could rise to between USD 90 billion and USD 110 billion without significant structural reform. Over 30 million smallholder farmers operate across Sub-Saharan Africa, accounting for approximately 80 percent of all farms and producing around 70 percent of the region's food, according to the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). Most of these farmers remain outside formal banking, with limited access to quality inputs, reliable markets, and affordable finance. The technical and commercial case for African agritech has rarely been stronger.
The cyclical stress is equally real. African agrifoodtech funding peaked at USD 776 million in 2022 and contracted to USD 192 million in 2024, a retreat of more than 75 percent from the peak, according to AgFunder's Developing Markets AgriFoodTech Investment Report 2025. Several high-profile operators have restructured, laid off staff, or pivoted away from capital-intensive business models during the contraction. Generalist venture capital has largely retreated from the category, and sector-specific funds have become more conservative about new deployments. This report synthesizes where the sector sits at the start of 2026 and what the structural conditions look like for the next phase.
African agrifoodtech funding has followed the broader African venture capital cycle but with additional category-specific pressure. The USD 776 million peak in 2022 reflected both the high-water mark of pan-African venture deployment and a specific moment of enthusiasm for agritech as an impact category. The subsequent contraction to USD 192 million in 2024 reflected general investor caution, several visible operator failures in the category, and the migration of generalist capital toward fintech and B2B commerce opportunities that had clearer unit economics.
The contraction does not represent a return to pre-2014 levels. The 2024 figure is still approximately six times larger than African agrifoodtech funding a decade earlier. The sector is smaller than it was at peak but substantially larger than it was in 2014 or 2015. Investors who remained in the category have concentrated their deployments around a smaller number of operators with demonstrated traction, which has produced a more uneven competitive landscape than the 2021 to 2022 cycle offered.
A small group of operators has captured the majority of African agrifoodtech funding. Twiga Foods, founded in 2014 by Peter Njonjo and Grant Brooke, is the Kenyan B2B agri-logistics operator that raised a USD 50 million Series C round in 2021 and became one of the most recognized brand names in the sector. Apollo Agriculture, founded in 2016 by Eli Pollak and Benjamin Njenga, raised a USD 40 million Series B in March 2022 and built a bundled service platform combining seeds, fertilizer, crop protection, agronomy advice, and insurance into a single customer relationship. Pula Advisors, founded in 2014, has insured over 20 million farmers across markets including Kenya, Senegal, Mozambique, and Ethiopia. ThriveAgric raised USD 56.4 million in debt funding in March 2022 and built a network of over 500,000 farmers. Hello Tractor, the Nigerian mechanization platform sometimes described as the "Uber for tractors," has established a distinctive position in farm equipment sharing.
These operators are concentrated geographically. Most are based in Kenya, Nigeria, or Egypt, reflecting the three largest markets by population, GDP, and smallholder farmer count. Nigeria has approximately 38 million smallholder farmers and a USD 364 billion GDP. Egypt has approximately 24 million smallholders and a USD 396 billion GDP. Kenya has approximately 8 million smallholders and a USD 108 billion GDP. These three markets have produced most of the visible African agritech companies, though operators in Ghana, Uganda, South Africa, and several other markets are building meaningful positions.
The dominant African agritech categories in 2024 and 2025 were Ag Marketplaces and Fintech, and Midstream Technologies (the supply chain and processing layers). According to industry investors, these categories represent the building blocks of the African agritech ecosystem because they offer the clearest paths to penetrating the smallholder farmer base that accounts for the majority of the continent's food system. Pure input distribution, mechanization, climate-smart practices, and upstream technology categories have received proportionally less funding.
Bundled service operators, who combine multiple categories into a single customer relationship, have emerged as a distinctive African pattern. Apollo Agriculture is the clearest example: a farmer on the Apollo platform receives seeds, fertilizer, crop protection, agronomy advice, and insurance as a single product rather than having to assemble those components from separate providers. The bundled model addresses the specific friction that smallholder farmers face in African conditions, where informal input markets are fragmented and information asymmetries are large. Pula Advisors has pursued a similar bundling logic on the insurance side, working with agricultural banks and SMEs to subsidize the cost of insurance products for end farmers.
Several structural headwinds complicate African agritech scaling. First, smallholder farmer economics are difficult. The typical smallholder cultivates a small plot, has limited cash reserves, and generates modest annual surpluses that must be divided among household consumption, school fees, and input reinvestment. An agritech operator who wants to serve this customer must keep product prices low enough to be affordable while maintaining unit economics that justify continued operation. Few operators have reconciled these two requirements comfortably.
Second, post-harvest losses remain large. The Food and Agriculture Organization and other sources have reported that African post-harvest losses for staple crops and fresh produce can exceed 30 percent in many markets. Twiga Foods reported that its operations reduced post-harvest losses from 30 percent to 4 percent among its sourced farmer base, which is a dramatic improvement but also a reminder of how large the underlying loss rates are when operators are not actively intervening.
Third, distribution infrastructure is weak. Rural roads, cold storage, and processing facilities are underdeveloped across most of the continent, which increases logistics costs and reduces the value that operators can extract from moving goods from farm to market. This is why several African agritech operators have effectively become logistics companies that happen to source from farmers rather than technology companies serving farmers directly.
Twiga Foods, once the most visible African agritech brand and named one of TIME magazine's 100 Most Influential Companies in 2022, experienced significant operational distress beginning in 2023. In August 2023, the company reduced its workforce by approximately 283 employees, roughly one-third of its permanent staff, citing challenging market conditions. The company disbanded its in-house delivery team and introduced a logistics marketplace model. In November 2023, Twiga announced efforts to clear outstanding dues to over 100 suppliers as part of its restructuring and refinancing processes. The CEO took a sabbatical in December 2023.
The Twiga restructuring is significant beyond the company itself because it signaled to the broader African agritech investor community that even the highest-profile operators in the sector could face severe operational challenges under market stress. The structural lessons (difficulties of scaling physical logistics, the pressure of maintaining supplier payments during capital scarcity, the complexity of managing fresh produce margins at African unit economics) applied to most other operators in the category, not just to Twiga.
Three indicators will shape African agritech in the year ahead. First, whether the 2024 funding floor holds or whether the category contracts further. The gap between the 2022 peak and the 2024 trough is large enough that a further contraction would push several operators into critical territory. Second, whether the bundled service model pioneered by Apollo Agriculture and Pula Advisors continues to produce better unit economics than standalone product offerings. Third, whether the nucleus farm and aggregator models gaining attention in East African agrifinance can unlock financing from commercial banks that have historically avoided direct smallholder lending. These three questions, as much as any specific company outcome, will determine whether African agritech emerges from the current cycle stronger or smaller.