How Agrovat, an agricultural extension startup, is leveraging modern tools to empower underserved farmers in Nigeria

I want to make farming a lifestyle for young people – Agrovat founder, Nkemjika Okeke

Agrovat is an agricultural mobile technology tool that connects underserved farmers to agricultural resources, to ensure food sustainability in Africa. The tool also seeks to encourage young people to participate in agriculture through continues agricultural education in a way that reframes their perspectives towards agriculture.

In this interview with Nigeria Today News, the founder/CEO of Agrovat, Mr Okeke talks about Agrovat and how it connects farmers to information, products, and financial services such as low interest loans, farming machineries and tools, new and improved crops species and farming methodologies that both help to improve the farming conditions, and reduce loss and crop mortality.

Mr Okeke also explains what inspired him to start the company, the challenges he has faced so far, and how his company is penetrating the market to serve underserved farmers despite those challenges.

Here are the excerpt from the interview.

NT: May we meet you, sir?

Okeke: My name is Nkemjika Okeke, A financial and business analyst. I am the CEO of Agrovat.

NT: That is interesting. Nice to meet you, sir. Okay, tell us about Agrovat. What is Agrovat and who is it for?

Okeke; Well, Agrovat is simply agriculture for everyone. If you want to narrow it down, Agrovat connects small holder farmers to farming technology, assists them to obtain inputs, links them to finance and credit facilities and helps them gain access to offtake markets to sell their crops at a competitive price by providing them with the necessary information and data in real time.

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NT: How does Agrovat work? Why should I use Agrovat?

Okeke: Agriculture is the second largest contributor to GDP in the Nigerian economy and small holder farmers are responsible for over 75 percent of our national output. However, a recent study in 2019 showed that these farmers are finding it difficult to improve their outputs due to issues like insecurity, information gap as well as the poor pricing system. By doing so, we are helping farmers improve their productivity by providing them with free access to updated information on inputs and technology.

Also, we constantly create information and then gather data that can assist us connect them to offtakes and input providers. We are currently developing a solution that would use their financial data to help them access credit at reduced interest rates. This information cycle of gathering and sharing helps the farmer to constantly improve their ways of farming and help them, you know, make better profits when they sell their crops.

NT: So, you provide farmers with real time data and market analysis to help them make better decisions and thus make more profits.

Okeke: Yeah! That’s right.

NT: As an African startup, I know that one of the bottlenecks is funding. How are you managing to fund Agrovat especially in this recession?

Okeke: (laughs) Well, you are right. Currently, we are bootstrapping at the moment. Myself and my co-founder, Zayyad Bello. We have a team that are currently working on building solutions.

We have raised just enough for our daily operations. However, like I said, we are currently open to raise funds from VCs. Enough to target our operations for the next milestone period and can adequately drive us towards greater margins.

NT: Tell me about your target market. We know that agriculture is vast. Are you serving everyone or a specific set of farmers?

It is good you asked that. You see, there are over 38 million smallholder farmers In Nigeria. We are currently servicing over 300 smallholder farmers actively and this is roughly 0.007% of the farmer population.

So, we are targeting at least 10-15% of the total through our information solutions. Our core focus is smallholder farmers who cannot read the PDF documents and written media on farming information.

As part of our milestone projects, we want to be able to cover commodity crops as well as commercial crops. Our major crop focus are on soybean, groundnut and maize. So, within the next year or two, we would cover crops like tomato and vegetables and other household crops. We are currently focusing on crops that are commercially driven to enable those farmers make better profits as their production costs and quality assurance are much higher.

NT: We have all heard how the ease of doing business in Nigeria is a mirage. What are the problems you have encountered in reaching the farmers and how are you scaling them?

Okeke: I am not sure where to start. One of the biggest problems we have encountered in penetrating the market is the adaptation of farmers to Agriculture. A lot of them do not think it is important to learn these things and that is why the trainings have been made very simplified that anyone who does not have a knowledge of agriculture can download the app and learn them. Even someone new to agriculture can follow the lessons on the app and grow crops in their backyard.

 We also tried to break the barrier of language, which has been one of the issues we faced, and solved these using extension agents that some of the farmers have worked with and can easily recognize.

So we are focusing on improving the knowledge of farmers and people who want to get into agriculture for the first time. This is our core focus. Our flagship mobile app called LENA would be launched before the end of 2022. It is an e-learning mobile app that contains animated videos in topics around soil science, farm technology, inputs, marketing and finance taught by extension agents and other experts and delivered in over 4 local languages.

NT: What does the future look like for Agrovat? Where do you see yourself in the next five years?

Okeke: Our vision for the next five years is to be at the forefront of agriculture information in Africa. We want to raise the next generation of farmers in Africa. Just like I said earlier, we are structuring content in a way that would persuade the young population to take up agriculture. Automated farming implements, AI/Robotic tools etc… 

Some day in the next five years, we want this generation to see farming more as a daily routine, a way of life than just a profession. You can see the impact of farming concentration today in rural areas. If there are issues like flood or heightened insecurity, food prices would rise because of scarcity. Therefore, we are currently focused on the smallholder farmer groups but we intend to build a generation of informed young people to take up small-scale farming.

NT: How does Agrovat complement the existing policies in the African agricultural landscape, especially in West Africa, and Nigeria? I am talking about MDGs, and SDGs and agricultural programs aimed at food sustainability in Africa.

Okeke: Well, for us at Agrovat, we are focused on the Sustainable Development Goal 2 of the United Nations, which focused on ending hunger, achieving food security, improved nutrition, and promoting sustainable agriculture.

NT: How critical is farmer education in attaining food security in Africa?

Okeke: Education is of great importance to us, as we strongly believe that an educated mind is capable of anything and this is a reason why we have decided to focus on improving agricultural education for the African farmers. When information is accessible to everyone that is when we can achieve food sustainability, that is when we can reduce hunger and ensure greater food security.

Remember that quality recommendations to farmers ensure crops are of good quality and thus promoting more yield all year round.

Finally, we believe that by educating the farmers, we can create jobs and help reduce unemployment thereby building a society of decent work and economic growth.

NT: If you look at Nigeria today, you would see that food prices have gone up, inflation is driving the cost of living to the roof and there is no end in sight. What do you think can be done? What is the way out here?

Okeke: Africa is in a grave danger. A danger that the current generation will wake up one day in the next 5 – 10 years and we will not see food to eat. Agrovat has a vision to reposition how Africa views and accepts agriculture.

In Europe, it is one of the most important activities of every town, city, and location. There is so much advancement in Agric technology that it worries me to know where we are on this scale. Our aim is not just to disseminate information but connect people to the right tools.

For Instance, quite recently, we were able to train over 20 people who are into yam farming on the right fertilizers to use for farming and then linked them to our verified fertilizer sellers and it led to a tradeoff.

Farm produce contained at least 10% more nutritional value and led to at least 5% less wastage. We have already succeeded in improving their sales in the market. Those crops alone weighed more and had a higher selling price than the average price in the market. This alone increased their margin by at least 10%. This is what information can do and that is what we want to replicate for our farmer base using the LENA app.

You can begin to imagine the impact the right information can do to our 3000-farmer base network who would have access to the app.

TN: You are right when you talked about Africa being in danger. I think the problem is political. We need to have the right people in the right places to implement better agricultural policies.

Okeke: Yes. If I was the minister of Agriculture today, I would make agriculture a compulsory course in the curriculum in the education system. We have a lot of young people who do not know much about agriculture and need to learn.

Secondly, a sustained budgetary allocation of at least 5-10% should go to research and development in areas of agriculture. We are way behind lots of countries like India and Pakistan in the development of agriculture and it is important we step up. This is partly why Agrovat has been beneficiary of various exhibitions and visits to some of these countries to assess their level of impact and seek to replicate or even innovate on those practices.

NT: Have you received any assistance from the government? Are you partnering with any government institution like the Bank of Agriculture?

Okeke: Currently, we are in the process of partnering with the FAO (food and agricultural organization) to study farming practices in other more agriculturally advanced nations and replicate their development here. 

We are also in partnership with EDAGRICOLE, Italy’s foremost agriculture education organization in knowledge transfer. We are also discussing a partnership with the Bank of Agriculture to provide financing to our farmer groups through our bookkeeping for farmers’ scheme; developing farmers’ financial records to enable them access credit at affordable interest rates.