Stakeholders in Africa's climate technology ecosystem, who attended the recently concluded AfricArena Nairobi Climate Tech Summit 2025, emphasised the need for more collaboration to attract more venture capital (VC) interest and increase access to finance.
In view of rapid growth in Africa's agri-tech market, the group also advocated for stronger support for start-up businesses across the continent.
Speaking to ITWeb Africa on the sidelines of the Summit, Gatwiri Njogu, co-founder and CEO of Kenyan financial cooperative Vunapay, stated that in order to garner VC and investor attention, businesses must demonstrate what challenge they are addressing and how they intend to do so.
Vunapay was founded in 2023 to digitise traditional payment infrastructure and speed up payments to small holder farmers.
Njogu commented: “Generally small holder farmers sell to cooperatives … they are paid whenever the cooperative has sold everything, which could take between six months to a year, which can lead them to poverty. So, we digitise the system for cooperatives and farmers and link them to financiers. We provide instant payment to the farmer as soon as they deliver their produce to the cooperatives.”
According to Njogu, Vunapay has since partnered with two financial institutions, one a government fund and the KCB Bank Kenya.
While the business is essentially an ERP system for cooperatives, it also builds the digital foundation and fintech rails for other companies such as crop insurance, soil health, and fertiliser service providers to use Vunapay's data and gain access to farmers.
The firm has agreements with over 300 cooperatives, of which 117 have been on-boarded, and serve 91,000 farmers.
Njogu explained that while identifying funders is tough, it is also difficult to adequately pitch potential financiers and offer them with local understanding and context on the subject of remuneration for smallholder farmers.
She went on to suggest that funders need to look forward: "Africa is the future. We have the youngest population in the world. In the coming years, Africa will have the largest customer base. Seventy percent of Africans are small-scale farmers.”
Africa is the future
Meanwhile, Maguelone Biau, co-founder and CEO of Sikili, and Sandra Awilli, founder and CEO of ShareCard, explored the realities of building a business in today's market, with a focus on digital infrastructure and growth opportunities.
Sikili is a Senegalese company that specialises in refurbishing technology devices, while ShareCard provides farmers with market access and financial services.
Biau and Awilli also agreed that finding trustworthy and competent people to build teams is tough, as is getting patient or long-term funding.
In the case of Biau, she believes that corruption, a lack of infrastructure, a lack of modern technology management, and regulatory constraints are also impediments in Africa, and that investors should keep this in mind when setting growth expectations for start-ups.
Nonetheless, she believes Africa will thrive and have a robust start-up ecosystem, but patience is required.
"We need investors who realise that playing in this space may require more time in the beginning and access to patient capital.At the beginning is exactly when it is slow, and if you want to act and go fast, you create bias, which is just fake growth.”
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