Nigerian startup Farmcrowdy, which allows Nigerians to participate in agriculture by selecting farms to sponsor, has announced the launch of 7,500 acres of new maize and rice farms on its platform on the back of growing demand and soldout farm units.
Farmcrowdy, which late last year launched a mobile app and secured US$1 million in seed funding, makes farms available for sponsorship on its agri-tech platform.
Funds are used for a variety of purposes, such as securing land, planting seeds, insuring farmers and produce, and selling the harvest, with sponsors able to track the process and receive a return on their sponsorship.
With demand high, the startup has now reopened additional crop farms for sponsorship in the Nigerian states of Kaduna and Kwara. Kaduna will see the cultivation of 5,000 acres of maize by 2,000 new Farmcrowdy farmers, while Kwara will see 2,500 acres of rice cultivated by over 1,000 farmers.
This increase in land more than doubles Farmcrowdy’s acreage, which at the end of 2017 had cultivated 4,000 acres of farmland across eight states in Nigeria. Since its launch in 2016, Farmcrowdy has empowered over 3,000 small scale-farmers across Nigeria. The new acquisition of land has seen 3,000 new direct farmers onboarded.
“Today’s announcement is such an incredible landmark for us. We have been fervently working towards scaling up our operations across the country and these 7,500 additional acres of rice and maize farms will allow us to do just that,” said Onyeka Akumah, co-founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of Farmcrowdy.
“We’re eager to see continued advanced growth in other crops including poultry in the near future, but at this point we are particularly looking forward to welcoming onto our platform more farm sponsors and followers locally and globally, as we continue to redefine the dynamics of farming and agriculture for not only Nigeria, but eventually Africa.”
Aside from the funding it raised last year, Farmcrowdy was also recently announced as a recipient of a US$325,000 grant from the GSMA Ecosystem Accelerator Innovation Fund.
