Africa Prize Investor Community Event Profiles
Emeka Nwachinemere, Nigeria
Kitovu Technology Company
Kitovu builds climate-smart farming and post-harvest infrastructure for African agriculture to enable smallholder farmers access the tools and resources they require to optimise their productivity and transform their livelihoods.
Smallholder farmers who typically grow 2–4-hectare farms realise low yields compared to global averages. Post-harvest, 40% of yields are lost due to poor storage, and lack of access to markets. This impacts farm-level productivity and farmer incomes.
These problems arise because farmers rely on guesswork, instinct, and traditional knowledge to make operational decisions, thereby planting at the wrong time, using the wrong inputs i.e., seedlings, fertiliser, and herbicides, and applying these at the wrong time.
Kitovu has built three main products that support climate-smart farming and enable access to post-harvest infrastructure; YieldMax, eProcure, and StorageX. YieldMax applies data science and remote sensing to provide smallholder farmers with a personalised agronomic advisory that delivers operational insights, input specifications, and crop health audits. At harvest, we match the farmers' produce to partner buyers through our eProcure service. We also provide access to effective storage and access to finance through StorageX, a platform that leverages Electronic Warehouse Receipts Systems to transform farmers' goods under storage into collaterals
We generate revenue through subscription-based services, transaction fees, and value-added offerings, ensuring sustainable growth and profitability. Farmers pay us $14.5 per Hectare for a YieldMax Subscription and $1 per Ton monthly for Storage. We make a 13% margin on farm gate prices when we supply processors with farm produce.
Some competitors we have identified include Rural Farmers Hub, Thrive Agric, and Babban Gona. Kitovu is differentiated by the bundle of value-added services we provide, as well as how we go the extra mile for the client because we designed the product with them.
By implementing our suite of solutions, farmers experience increased crop yields by up to 20% while reducing input costs by 30%. Post-harvest losses drop significantly, improving overall productivity.