ThriveAgric, an Abuja, Nigeria-based agtech company, raised $56.4M in debt funding.
Backers included local commercial banks and institutional investors. The raise also included a co-investment grant of $1.75M from the USAID-funded West Africa Trade & Investment.
The company intends to use the funds to grow its 200,000+ farmer base, and expand into new African markets, including Ghana, Zambia and Kenya.
Founded in 2017 (and fully operational since 2018) and led by Chief Executive Officer Uka Eje, CTO Ayo Arikawe, CFO Olurotimi Arigbede, and Head of Risk Management and Compliance Michael Kadiri, ThriveAgric empowers farmers in Nigeria to sell their products to FMCGs and food processors, leveraging its proprietary technology to access finance as well as improve productivity and sales to promote food security. The technology, an Agricultural Operating System (AOS), works entirely offline, dispatches USSD to farmers, and powers Android apps used by field agents to help digitally collate creditworthy farmers and gather relevant farm data. The company supports Africa’s agriculture sector by assisting smallholder farmers in producing high-quality grains. Harvests, including maize, rice and soybeans, are stored in many of the company’s 450+ warehouses in Bauchi, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano and Katsina states in Nigeria, before being commoditized and offered to local and global trade markets at a premium price.
This latest funding follows $9m the company raised in 2020. Over the past 12 months, ThriveAgric’s revenues have increased five-fold, with a year-on-year increase of 277% in farmer numbers.
About ThriveAgric
Founded in 2017 (and fully operational since 2018), ThriveAgric seeks to ensure global food security, by enabling Africa’s agriculture sector; particularly its smallholder farmers to profitably and sustainably produce high-quality grains.
ThriveAgric’s Agriculture Operating System (AOS) can be used by field agents and farmers to provide finance and enable sales for their harvest, while digitising commodities. It works entirely offline, capturing farmer onboarding and credit scoring, and ultimately links farmers to capital, data-driven best practices, and access to local and global markets.
1 205,000 farmers in 2021 accessed ThriveAgric’s AOS (Agricultural Operating System) product, compared to 53,000 in 2020.2 Produced and traded up to 6% of Nigeria’s total maize demand.