This archive report was first published on 15 June 2020.
On a half-acre plot in Kenya's Rift Valley, Rachel Bor's neighbours celebrated their most bountiful maize crop yet, thanks to credit they received to buy better quality seeds, fertiliser, and pesticides through Safaricom's Digifarm mobile phone platform.
Since its launch, Digifarm has registered one million farmers, with 42,000 active users, and is on a hiring spree and seeking new logistics partners.
Like Safaricom's wildly successful M-Pesa, a mobile payment system aimed at small traders and Kenyans without bank accounts, Digifarm charges a small per-transaction percentage fee.
According to Safaricom's internal projections, the platform is expected to earn between Sh25-Sh250 billion annually within five years, representing up to 10 percent of annual agricultural transactions in the country.
However, the market's fragmented nature poses a significant challenge, said Professor Jane Ambuko at the University of Nairobi's college of agriculture, as firms like Digifarm must figure out how to reliably gather commodities from small farms to be sold in bulk.
Despite this, the market is huge, with agriculture employing more than a quarter of the global workforce and being the biggest employer in almost all the world's poorer nations.
European Union-funded study last year estimated the African agri-tech market to be worth $2.6 billion (Sh275.6 billion) annually, with Digifarm not being the only newcomer in Kenya's agri-tech space.
