African Agritech

58 points by niccolop 4 years ago | 11 comments

roughly 4 years ago |

It strikes me how many of the challenges mentioned in the post are straight up just old school infrastructure problems - like irrigation, and roads. There've been attempts in various parts of Africa to use tech to circumvent a lack of proper infrastructure (the entire cell-phone-payments system that I'm sure everyone's heard of, and wide spread use of cell phones generally without landlines), but I'm always curious if this is Better or if it's just Cheaper. There's also a reasonably credible perception of the valley and VC broadly as being too focused on shiny tech and not enough on actual institutions and capacity-building, and I'm curious if that's echoed in the African startup/tech scene as well, or if maybe a healthier or more holistic approach is more common in that community.

jeffreyrogers 4 years ago | |

The important aspects of agriculture were mechanized/automated decades ago. There's a lot of room for growth in Africa[1] just by taking tech that's old but works and using it there. If it has to be marketed as SV style entrepreneurship that's fine, but I doubt any of the tech layered on top will be a real driver of productivity.

[1]: The caveat is that heavy mechanization is capital intensive and since labor costs are lower in Africa the optimal mix of mechanization will be different than in the US. It also leads to centralization and larger farms which is sometimes undesirable for political/cultural reasons.

traceroute66 4 years ago | |

> I'm always curious if this is Better or if it's just Cheaper

In terms of cell phones, neither.

I know people who tried to push on with various cross-border activities virtually during COVID, some of which involved quite a lot of people spread out across Africa.

TL;DR it didn't work out that well.

African colleagues kept on dropping out of remote sessions because of various issues with local infrastructure (e.g. unpredictable local power supply killing cell masts).

But also there was a lot of feedback that Western style cell contracts with generous data allowances are either non-existent or atrociously expensive. So a lot of people just plain couldn't be online for long sessions and had to drop-in here and there.

whimsicalism 4 years ago | |

> not enough on actual institutions and capacity-building

We have the east coast to think about all that silly stuff

zehnfischer 4 years ago |

Supporting African founders in Agriculture, it always strikes me how high the potential for improvement is. Demand is mostly higher than supply, harvest happens twice a year and yet when you start out as a founder you need to not just build one company, but solve a whole bunch of problems while you do it. You need to solve the logistics problem, create an agent network, find a dev agency that doesn't ripp you off - since it is very hard to build an in house tech team - and so on and on. Yet from an innovation stand-point it is very interesting field. Since your customers - i.e. small hold farmers - face extreme economic pressure every day, you basically have to create value on day 1. No one got time for long term investments.

If only there would be more and somewhat orchestrated innovation happen, I think many issues could be fixed.

spicymaki 4 years ago |

Very interesting, thanks for posting. As a global community we need to improve the efficiency of land and water use, which is going to be critical for human survival. As well as preserving biodiversity. Many countries in Africa has plenty of potential, but limited resources we should all take note.

network2592 4 years ago |

It looks a bit like a vague meandering piece trying to drum up interest for their investment syndicate. The user that submitted this piece seems to be leading a syndicate based on Africa with the author [0].

Investment in Africa would be better served by listening more to underprivileged Africans that have not had access to the same opportunities and capital. Microfinance to support this demographic would be more effective and impactful than investing in an angel syndicate supported by these sort of blog posts.

[0] https://angel.co/arborem/syndicate

niccolop 4 years ago | |

That is only mentioned in the second article.

Rather the vagueness reflects an interest in exploring solutions. That's normally what blogs / essays are like aren't they?

network2592 4 years ago | | |

Perhaps exploring solutions can yield better outcomes if exploring with the ones that will benefit from those solutions. For example, if you are trying to develop agriculture solutions for Africa, a blog post promoted on HN and Angel is unlikely to be read by a subsistence farmer in Africa.

There is a cottage industry of people claiming to do projects to help Africa. With marketing via blog posts geared towards those with access to capital, these projects can be funded. And since it is about Africa, there is less scrutiny about how effective it really is. Superficial facile accolades along with wining and dining at global events can further obfuscate this reality.

universa1 4 years ago |

mhm... interesting to read that the practice actually mirrors research with the lack of infrastructure etc..., but the need for investment in agriculture in Africa is not particularly new, even though the angle through startups/venture capital is different.

Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) [1] was and is "active" in most African countries in the past 15+ years :-)

[1] https://www.nepad.org/caadp

sremani 4 years ago |

NPKs (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) are already on the verge of setting records. African or otherwise, focusing on NPKs and local procurement or alternatives is going to the most important thing around the world this year.

North Africa is already on the verge of food security collapse. Rest of Africa is not further from it.

$150 barrel oil imposing massive input costs is going to take global south straight to Famine.