Africa’s agricultural potential is immense, yet its smallholder farmers struggle to access the resources and markets needed to thrive.
Agritech company Farmerline, however, plans to change that, and has been on a mission to empower farmers to increase their yields and income through agro-inputs, advisory services, and access to the markets. A trip to the field underscores the importance of trust as a valuable currency, which Farmerline has demonstrated to keenly understand. “Without that, we can’t grow. So everything we do is centered around that.”
FMO investments
2023 EUR 106K
for a technical assistance project
2023 USD 1 mln
to further scale their operations
2022 USD 3 mln
to further scale their operations
FINANCIAL PRODUCTS USED Equity
FUNDING SOURCE FMO Ventures Program
The FMO Ventures program is funded by the Dutch Government and the EU
LACK OF ACCESS
Consider this: over half of the world’s arable land is in Africa, yet countries across the continent annually spend USD 35 billion importing food instead of growing it locally. There are 33 million African smallholder farms which contribute 70% of food supply, yet they remain among the poorest and most vulnerable segments of the rural population. And it doesn’t stop there: they often have little or no access to affordable agricultural inputs such as seeds or fertilizers, lack information such as access to AI or Google, and aren’t climate resilient. These challenges, among others, can lead to as much as a 20% decline in agricultural outputs, severely impacting the quality of life of these farmers.
Enter Farmerline, a Ghanaian-based agritech company founded in 2013 by Alloysius Attah and Emmanuel Owusu Addai. In the early days, they went door-to-door selling inputs to farmers in the Ashanti Region, reaching around 800 farmers with just a USD 600 grant. Today, they provide access to markets, inputs and training to 400,000 smallholders in Ghana and support 2.2 million jobs in Africa, and have four offices in Ghana and one in Côte d'Ivoire.
smallholder farms in Africa produce 70% of the food supply
VISITING THE DAGAABA WIDOWS COOPERATIVE
To see Farmerline in action, we visit one of the last mile communities Farmerline supports in the town of Ejura, over 300 kilometers away from their main office in the capital, Accra. A 2-hour drive from Kumasi, the capital of the Ashanti Region, Ejura is a rural town nestled between seemingly endless cocoa, plantain and pineapple farms—many of which are as small as one acre. In the northern part of the Ashanti Region, virtually everyone works the land: the way of life has been, is, and will likely continue to be farming. The road alternates between relatively smooth pavement and dirt roads riddled with potholes. The rainy season should have started in August, but the usual patterns are becoming less predictable. For now, it makes driving easier, but one can imagine the worry it’s causing the farmers.
The cooperative we’re visiting is called the Dagaaba Widows Association, which was officially registered in Ejura in 2016, although it’s been around for years before that. It currently has around 54 members, but as the women come in, most in patterned dresses and wearing head scarves, they explain the town’s chief passed away yesterday, so many are at his house paying their respects.
women are member of the Dagaaba Widow Association
“The cooperative jointly saves their money in the Susu and splits the earned interest—allowing them to reap many of the benefits of a commercial banking account without directly needing one.”
The final turnout is around 20 women, with some on the board in various roles: accountant, secretary, vice treasurer. The group heads inside of the community building—an unassuming faded pink building which has no doors, only sliding metal bars (“burglarproof” in Ghanaian terminology)—and settle down on the plastic chairs, fanning themselves to mitigate the relentless heat. They start by introducing themselves one by one, each one getting up to speak and then have it translated into Twi and English by Christopher, the director of the group and the one who communicates with Farmerline on behalf of the association.
The group grows a range of crops, which includes cowpea, maize, groundnut, and rice. All these crops are used to make Ghanaian staples such as jollof rice, banku, groundnut stew, or kenkey. “Ejura’s open-air market is one of the busiest in the area, so there are a lot of farmers, traders, and customers,” Christopher says.
Zuma, one of the farmers, explains some of the additional activities the cooperative engages in: “So that we have enough income to provide for our families, we make soap and are part of a Susu collection.” The latter is a form of microfinance which offer Ghanaians without access to traditional finance a way to save and access their own money safely, in exchange for a small fee. The cooperative jointly saves their money in the Susu and splits the earned interest—allowing them to reap many of the benefits of a commercial banking account without directly needing one.
Photo: Farmer group training event at Jeffesi in the upper west region of Ghana
WORKING WITH THE APP
The farmers can purchase inputs from a Farmerline franchise shop in town, a small wooden kiosk with fertilizer, seeds, clean cookstoves, and other products. There, the input dealer opens the Farmerline Grow app on his phone and offers a quick demonstration of how he can place orders or update his inventory all through the app. “It’s very easy, he explains, “but I can also do it over the phone if I want.” In that case, Farmerline will update it in their proprietary software to ensure the sales and inventory remain fully digitized.
Dealers receive full or partial credit from Farmerline to sell the inputs and are given an amount of time to pay back the credit. “And since this is one of our franchise shops,” Richard, the Ashanti Region Manager explains, “when we receive funding from investors or through crowdfunding campaigns, we use them to offer discounts on the inputs to make it more affordable for the farmers, since we’ve seen in surveys that it’s still sometimes too expensive for farmers to regularly apply.”
For the farmers, they’re able to purchase inputs ahead of farming season, with Farmerline requiring a down payment at first. The cooperative explains that they purchase their inputs together in one go, although it does require waiting slightly longer than some would like as newer farmers need longer to pool together enough money. One farmer named Dora says, “For the newer ladies who have joined us, they have not yet seen the benefits of using the products Farmerline offers. But I have seen how it works for me: before I only had three bags of maize from one acre of land, but for the last harvest season after using the fertilizer, I was able to harvest 10 bags.”
Photo: Field agent with maize farmer Walewale in the northeast region of Ghana
“Before I only had three bags of maize from one acre of land, but for the last harvest season after using the fertilizer, I was able to harvest 10 bags.”
Photo: Community engagement at Pulima in the upper west region of Ghana
CHALLENGES FACED BY WOMEN FARMERS
While Farmerline provides ample support, there are other issues the cooperative faces, which bubbles up over the meeting. Mariana explains how, when she or her friends need to plough their farms, they struggle with renting a tractor or thresher since male farmers take precedence over them. “It means we need to wait and lose valuable time,” she says.
Gender-based discrimination is also an issue when it comes to land. Christopher explains, “Most of the widows lease property from landowners, and while the women want to reinvest their earnings into the land, several farmers have had the land taken away from them when the property owner sees how many crops the women have been able to grow after one season with the support from Farmerline. Tellingly, the owners don’t do the same to the men. “So we may have to look for another property, which means we lose out on a season of farming,” Mariana adds.
Another woman explains that after her late husband passed, his family took the land away from her for three years. “It was only after joining the cooperative and working with the town chief that I was able to get the land back,” she says. Then there’s the fact that the women may be taken advantage due to illiteracy: many are unable to exactly ascertain if the land they’re leasing is exactly an acre. In the case of Dora, the cooperative believes she may have had an even bigger harvest with the fertilizer had she had a full acre, which Richard says he will investigate.
“Gender-based discrimination is also an issue when it comes to land.”
These are deep-rooted issues that understandably go beyond the direct services of Farmerline, but the holistic support and advisory services still are much-needed. Thirty minutes into the meeting, some women chime up and point out how they have seen that the rainy season is delayed. “It’s been almost a month,” one says, shaking her head and scowling, “and it looks like from the weather updates you send us that we won’t see much rain soon, so what should we do with planting the maize?” Richard then takes time to explain how much longer they should hold off on planting more maize looking at upcoming weather.
Photo: Community engagement at Pulima in the upper west region of Ghana
When some farmers note that that the groundnut plants have been experiencing what they call leprosy, Richard says, “Well, you actually need to fertilize the groundnuts as well.” This comes as a surprise to everyone, including Christopher, and sets off a lengthy discussion on how he once used single superphosphate, why it didn’t work for the groundnuts he grew, and what they should be using now. As long as the questions keep popping up, he takes his time to answer them, even if it means running over times—which it does, but Richard seems unperturbed. Only when there are no more questions is the meeting adjourned, a half hour after it was meant to end.
Later, standing outside as the women walk out of the community building, discussing among themselves how they’ll get home, Richard explains, “It’s easy to take for granted all the information that we can easily access ourselves, but not everyone has the same access to finance, technology, or knowledge. That’s why we want to be this hub to support farmers and help them create their wealth and why I enjoy my job.”
A HUB TO SUPPORT FARMERS
And that’s the Farmerline mission in a nutshell, what they’ve been dedicated to since day one: helping to ensure that farmers get a larger slice of pie. In the Accra office, Worlali Senyo, the Country Manager, explains more about their strategy: “We essentially provide three solutions to farmers: agro-inputs, advisory service, and access to the markets, and we try to do as much of this as possible through technology. Access to the market is quite important, because if we help farmers increase their yields, but they aren’t able to actually sell it, then what’s the point?”
Essentially, Farmerline exists to bridge a gap: they build relationships with smallholder farmers, then connect them to industry players like food traders, NGOs, governments, manufacturing companies.
Let’s say that there’s a farmer that needs credit for inputs: they can request it through their local farmer-based organization or cooperative, will receive the inputs and be registered into Farmerline’s systems. They’ll then have their identity verified by a call center executive and can then start attending Farmerline workshops in their community. Now that they’ve been onboarded into the system, they’ll receive regular updates via their phone and can grow their crops utilizing the knowledge they’ve received from Farmerline. If they have additional questions, they can receive support by calling Farmerline’s helpdesk, and when it’s time to sell their crops, can do so through Farmerline’s network of approved buyers.
“We really try to take a multi-pronged service approach with our customers,” Worlali says. “That means not just providing inputs and machinery like tractors or tricycles, but also improving financial literacy, building climate resilience, and even offering value-added products like clean cookstoves through partnerships with other players.”
“We take a multi-pronged approach, providing not just inputs and machinery, but also improving financial literacy, climate resilience, and offering value-added products like clean cookstoves.”
languages are spoken in Ghana
WORKING WITH AI
While most modules play a role in Farmerline’s overall mission of increasing profits for farmers, there’s one module that creates a regular touchpoint with Farmerline for the farmers, as seen in Ejura, and that’s Darli AI.
In Ghana, 31.5% of agricultural household members have no formal education, and 60% have up to a middle school level education. While AI has done a remarkable job in bridging language barriers, it often remains targeted at literate users, or is implemented for major languages. Ghana is highly multilingual, with over 80 languages spoken, so to tackle that, Mergdata recently piloted its Darli module which uses AI-powered conversational systems that allow them to communicate directly with farmers, regardless of the language they speak.
Worlali explains: “This means if farmers can’t read, they can receive weather updates or the latest crop prices via an automated phone call in say, Dagaare. But even more, they can also now directly call our toll-free helpline and speak with an AI-powered bot which will translate what they’re saying from Dagaare, to Twi, to English, formulate a response, and translate it back to Daagare.”
This allows Farmerline to reach more farmers with limited call center agents, although the agents are still available and can use Darli to communicate with farmers. Darli also offers sentiment analysis for quality assurance, which frees up a significant amount of time for agents while still ensuring that smallholder farmers are satisfied with the system.
Photo: Community engagement at Pulima in the upper west region of Ghana
FINANCING GROWTH
Farmerline has come a long way from when Alloysius and Emmanuel met in university to creating a powerful platform like Mergdata and securing their first equity raise of USD 6.4 million in a Pre-Series A investment in 2022, of which FMO provided USD 3 million to allow Farmerline to further scale its operations. “It’s been really challenging and rewarding, but you always need to give 110%. We’re doing jobs that ideally, the government would be playing a bigger role in, but we are a private sector company at the end of the day. We really utilize a start-up approach: very agile, very innovative. And having strategic partners is crucial, of course.”
“Bringing on institutional investors like FMO definitely took time,” Worlali continues. “We had some experience with going through rigorous due diligence processes with another investor, which helped prepare us for the experience with FMO. We also had one of the Big Four audit our books to help us take a critical look at our finances, and it verified our strong financial record.”
The financing provided through FMO and the Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF) was crucial in helping bolster the Farmerline network and scale their impact in increasing farmers’ wealth, but as a tech-forward company rapidly expanding, can Farmerline keep that human touch central to what they do? “We’re really focused on having as many touch points as possible,” Worlali says. “While we can’t be everywhere, we try to keep the ‘face of Farmerline’ as prominent as possible. That includes our 399 helpline, working with partners who provide inputs, having agents on the ground, sponsoring in-person field engagements.” A recent example is when Farmerline partnered with agro-input providers who had new products for rice and maize, so Farmerline brought in experts who showed the smallholder farmers how to apply these solutions.
While the general sentiment seems to be that balancing the need for scaling while maintaining the quality of support and services offered to farmers isn’t always easy, Worlali says, “We recognize that we’re the choice partner for many smallholder farmers, so we want to make sure we’re doing right by them. We’re doing quarterly assessments, and our Impact and Development team are pushing us to do our best.”
So far, their best does seem to be working: a 60 Decibels assessment showed a 57% adoption rate of Farmerline’s techniques and services and 56% crop productivity rate, with a strong net promoter score of 43. “Our most valuable asset is trust. Without that, we can’t grow. So everything we do is centered around that, so the farmers who partner with us can continue to build local prosperity.”
Outcomes of Decibel’s assessment:
adoption rate of Farmerline’s app and services
crop productivity increase
Net Promotor Score
"We want to build farmers' climate resilience, but it's important to start small and focus on the immediate effects of climate change when working with smallholders who have limited financial resources."
One of the ways that Farmerline plans to do that going forward is by building climate resilience. Worlali explains, “We want farmers to be less reliant on sporadic rain patterns, especially as they become less predictable, so we’re looking into piloting drip irrigation systems. We also want to start doing more with soil carbon sequestration to reduce CO2 emissions and enhance soil health, but it’s important to start small and focus on the immediate effects of climate change when working with smallholders with limited finance.”
While future plans look big for Farmerline, their DNA remains unchanged. Whether it’s partnering with new institutions, governments, NGOs, or local agribusinesses; offering their Mergdata technology to new stakeholders; or scaling in Ghana, the emphasis is still on ensuring that those in the agribusiness sector can receive more of the wealth they help generate, and to get the bigger slice of the pie, the one they deserved all along.
Listening to all this, one might feel the urge to stick a range of labels onto Farmerline: they’re an ecosystem enabler, they collect financial and transactional data on farmers, they’re an agricultural AI frontrunner, and the list goes on. But Worlali sums it up more succinctly than all that: “We want to be known as the go-to farmer marketplace for anything agriculture. That’s Farmerline.”
A FUTURE WE CAN FORESEE IS A FUTURE THAT WE CAN CREATE TOGETHER
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