How Ghana’s agritech star harnesses data, technology, and partnerships to drive farm productivity and global market access for thousands of smallholder farmers.
The African Agricultural Revolution: Why Complete Farmer is the Ideal West African Case Study
According to McKinsey, in Sub-Saharan Africa, the percentage of smallholder farmers exceeds 60%, while agriculture only accounts for about 23% of the continent’s GDP.
Despite the great opportunity and potential in the African agricultural sector, it has remained challenging for the continent to participate successfully in the world’s global supply chains. This is largely because of infrastructure and supply chain limitations. Due to the dominance of medium and small-sized farms, it is important to boost productivity if the economic conditions in the region are to improve.
Towards that goal, Complete Farmer, a Ghanaian agritech, seeks to transform and revolutionize the continent’s farming practice. This is by developing critical physical and technical infrastructure to enhance the efficiency of the agricultural value chain. The agritech startup’s recent pre-Series A funding round raised over $10 million. This includes $7 million in equity and another $3.4 million in debt.
What is Complete Farmer
The African agriculture value chain is plagued by underinvestment, inefficiency, and unpredictability, factors that tend to stunt the region’s productivity. An agritech startup, Complete Farmer, provides farmers with a more efficient way of feeding the world by connecting them with global food buyers. The company also allows farmers to gain a definite competitive edge across the entire supply chain. To ensure high-quality commodities production, Complete Farmer works closely with farmers to ensure they meet rigorous global market standards.
Complete Farmer was founded by a Ghanaian entrepreneur, Desmond Koney in 2016. Peter Yefi is the Technology lead, and he brings on board a wealth of computer science and training in artificial intelligence (AI). He has helped Complete Farmer scale its technological infrastructure as it seeks to support both commercial and smallholder farmers (70% of users) across West Africa.
Through a digital platform, the company provides streamlined logistics, real-time farm monitoring tools, and production protocols tailored to market demand, helping farmers in the country with traceable produce of high quality that meet export standards. Through this model, the company is working towards building a more inclusive and resilient global agricultural value chain.
Through EOSDA Crop Monitoring satellite imagery analytics, Complete Farmer has since 2021 harnessed data-driven insights that empower farmers to realize the required benchmarks. This strategic technology integration enhances the efficiency and precision of farming practices while also inculcating a culture of excellence among the participating farmers. Complete Farmer, through this innovative approach, is now at the forefront of revolutionizing agricultural production in West Africa for a more market-responsive and sustainable future.
1. Growth and Expansion
Complete Farmer is headquartered in Accra. The agritech company operates a digital crowd-farming platform that links farmers with a diverse range of global buyers. It seeks to strengthen the agricultural value chain through data-driven insights and technology. The Complete Farmer business model includes a technological platform that facilitates transactions and the supply of agronomic assistance to the farmers.
The rise and growth of Complete Farmer represents a convergence of European development finance and Ghanaian innovation to showcase how private-public partnerships can accelerate agricultural transformation by bridging the persistent infrastructure gaps faced by Africa.
Initially, the company operated as a contractor where it cultivated farms on behalf of clients. In 2018, the Complete Farmer company transitioned to a marketplace model and aggregator. Since then, the platform has witnessed rapid growth, bringing together more than 12,000 farmers spread across five key agricultural regions in Ghana. Currently, Complete Farmer oversees cultivation in over 30,000 acres of farmland. Notably, the startup has successfully delivered farm produce to international markets while helping farmers cut post-harvest losses by leveraging technology.
2. Revenue Base
From 2021 to 2022, Complete Farmer’s revenue saw a remarkable growth surge, growing from $2.8 million to $5.3 million. The expansion strategy partly includes launching new product lines. This includes a farmer’s vendor platform for buying essential resources and an embedded finance product that facilitates direct remittances.
The recent crowdfunding effort that raised $300,000 will go into developing new products, signing strategic partnerships, and funding more infrastructure developments. Part of this includes setting up additional fulfillment centers locally and expanding into new markets like Togo and Cote d’Ivoire.
3. Business Model
The Complete Farmer platform serves three key stakeholders: farmer, buyers and other stakeholders, such as consumers. The vision was to create an interconnected world that eats together by working together. The business model adapted by Complete Farmer is effective as it operates to improve the yield and quality of local production by leveraging agronomic data and providing advice to farmers. The latter includes linking up farmers to long-term funding and agricultural inputs.
The farmers’ primary interaction is with the EOSDA Crop Monitoring API on the Complete Farmer digital platform. This arises from the fact that most farmers often focus their attention to specific data elements, especially those addressing rain forecasts. Others may seek additional data to help them gain a more comprehensive understanding of their farmland.
Complete Farmer provides farmers with international buyers which including some of the largest fast moving consumer good (FMCG) companies in the world. This ensures the buyers get reliable access to produce that is grown to their exact crop specifications. The Complete Farmer platform allows international buyers to source certified crops easily and also digitally monitor every procurement process step, ensuring fairness, consistency, and superior crop quality.
Why Complete Farmer Stands Out in West Africa
Smallholder farmers in West Africa are often faced with many challenges. Leading among these include a lack of infrastructure, financing, technical knowledge, logistics solutions, and committed buyers. The lack of access to ready markets and support leads to inconsistencies in raw materials supply, and exploitation by middlemen. Ultimately, this leads to a vicious cycle of underinvestment and underdevelopment of the continent’s agricultural industry.
Complete Farmer tackles some of these common challenges in several ways:
- It facilitates farmers to access the export market and get $-value for their work.
- Boosting farm yields through data-driven insights and precision farming tools.
- Improving agricultural supply consistency through access to working capital.
- Through a transparent and digitized process, global produce buyers can access quality-certified crops easily.
In West Africa, Complete Farmer stands out due to its hybrid and unique approach to agriculture. It combines physical infrastructure and digital technology to provide farmers with a comprehensive solution for their needs and challenges. It sets itself out by providing quality inputs, post-harvest support directly, and market access to farmers, particularly those located in rural, underserved areas. Also, farmers can leverage satellite imagery and data-driven insights to improve farming practices.
Complete Farmer also differentiates itself in another unique way. It has designed farming protocols customized to meet international buyer requirements. These are the guidelines that farmers follow throughout the growing season to ensure that international export standards are met, particularly for crops like soybeans and chili peppers.
A. Technological Innovation
By leveraging technology, Complete Farmer is helping African farmers access global markets. Robust farming protocols enable the farmers to grow produce that meets international market specifications. In turn, this boosts farm yields, incomes, and farmer livelihoods. Complete Farmer has its proprietary technology that users can leverage through an interactive dashboard. This includes own IoT devices, machine learning, analytics, and other modern farm technologies geared toward supporting operations and cultivation.
The platform supports precision agriculture technologies that assist farmers optimize their farming tools and resources. For example, they can leverage AI algorithms and sensors to monitor water levels, soil conditions, and crop health. This assists farmers to know the best times for planting, watering, and crop harvesting. Relying on real-time data helps improve efficiency and crop yields.
In addition, precision farming ensures the production of quality crops since farmers apply pesticides and fertilizer only when crops require it. Also, the Complete Farmer platform assists farmers in knowing when diseases attack crops and how to quickly intervene.
The technology-driven insights give farmers several other benefits. The farmers can leverage the Complete Farmer platform to gain direct access to international buyers, ensuring they benefit from premium pricing and guaranteed sale of their crops. For example, when they sell through the platform, they see 52% average net profit margins compared to only 20 percent when they sell through brokers and middlemen.
B. Scalability & Replicability
Complete Farmer wants to transform farming practices by developing and investing in critical technical infrastructure. The goal is to enhance agricultural value chain efficiency, provide access to international markets, promote sustainable farming practices, and introduce farmers to new crops.
The recent Complete Farmer capital infusion builds on the success realized in the September 2023 pre-Series A funding round, which had raised $10.4 million. This will drive the Ghanaian company towards consolidating its ongoing efforts in achieving its ambitions of transforming agriculture in Africa.
Alongside technological innovation and geographic expansion into other countries like Togo and Cote d’Ivoire, Complete Farmer intends to use the fresh funding to build strategic partnerships with key stakeholders both in the technology and agriculture sectors.
C. Networking and Collaborations
On the Complete Farmer platform, buyers can easily and conveniently source quality produce directly from the farms. Buyers also get access to a robust network of qualified farmers using a streamlined procurement process. Farmers, on the other hand, get access to global markets, data-driven cultivation, and expert support. For faster growth, farmers can also leverage a single platform that has international global brands trust.
Financiers can actively engage in the value chain and benefit from the shared rewards, regardless of their geographical location. They can provide farmers with the necessary working capital they need to meet purchase orders from local and global buyers. Through the Complete Farmer interactive dashboard, financiers can monitor farm progress and earn a share of the profit from the produce sales after harvest.
Before they are listed on the Complete Farmer platform, producers or farmers are first vetted and trained in the data-cultivation guidelines and protocols. Because other players on the platform attend to matters related to capital, farm inputs, and markets, the farmers are free to concentrate on cultivation for maximum results.
Other aspects of the supply chain that are catered for by other stakeholders include logistics, shipping, and quality audits. Through Internet of Things (IOT) connections, all stakeholders, including farmers, buyers, and the technical team, can enjoy the benefits of transparency in transactions and full process visibility.
Comparative Advantage Over Other Agritech Startups
By facilitating collaboration between different stakeholders using a unified digital platform, Complete Farmer helps reduce losses across the entire value chain. Leveraging data-driven insights, precision technology, and data-driven cultivation techniques, Complete Farmer reduces food loss during the production stage, while the ready markets help cut post-harvest losses.
Unlike most other agritech startups, Complete Farmer provides small-scale farmers with capital, inputs, and technical knowledge to improve yields and maintain the sustainability of agricultural land. These are benefits that farmers would normally not access easily when operating on their own.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
The initial Complete Farmer goal was to only support farmers on the platform. However, demand quickly arose from both large and small-scale operators, which made adjustments to accommodate them.
The COVID-19 pandemic threw another spanner into the works. The pandemic-related supply chain disruptions prompted exponential increases in demand from international markets. To scale up the platform and enable the onboarding of additional farmers, in 2022, the startup Complete Farmer turned to accelerators and seed investors to raise the required capital.
This included the following:
- Ingressive Capital
- Norrsken Accelerator
- EchoVC
- Samurai Incubate, Launch Africa, and
- Kepple Ventures.
The resultant growth highlighted the urgency to develop and upgrade key infrastructures within the company’s supply chain system. This included, among others, centers for post-harvest, produce packaging, and more robust quality control. To meet this need, Complete Farmer raised $10.4 million in 2023, enabling the startup to operate seven fulfillment centers in Ghana and Togo. Additionally, the company recently secured $2.5 million (€2.2 million) from the EU-backed AgriFI initiative.
The Future of Complete Farmer & West African Agritech
Already, the Ghanaian company has made significant contributions by bringing on board over 12, 000 farmers on a single platform. In addition, Complete Farmer is currently overseeing cultivation in over 31,000 acres of land and delivering commodities to buyers in Asia, Europe, and other global markets.
The platform now has over 50,000 farmers on board, with 90% of them strictly adhering to the platform’s cultivation protocols and also meeting international buyers’ standards. The current focus is on high-demand crops such as groundnuts, cow nuts, soybeans, cassava, sweet potato, chili pepper, ginger, pineapple, and mangos.
Looking into the future, the Accra-based agritech company is targeting to bring on board their platform at least 150,000 farmers and also grow to half a million members in about three years. In addition, Complete Farmer is in the process of raising $22 million to fuel the next growth phase.
Besides the anticipated growth, the funding will help in technology upgrades. In particular, this will be critical as Complete Farmer looks to expand into more West African countries where understanding the cultivation protocols may be more challenging. To address this potential gap, the company is developing an AI application to help translate cultivation protocols into local languages, ensuring that more farmers can easily access the tools.
Conclusion
Complete Farmer’s journey from a contractor to an internationally acclaimed dynamic agritech platform showcases the adaptability and resilience necessary to succeed in the evolving landscape of African agriculture. As the company continues to grow, its impact on local farmers and the broader agritech sector is poised to be both transformative and enduring. The proven marketplace business model adapted by Complete Farmer is now well-positioned to help transform African agriculture. It is expected to continue contributing to economic growth, food security, and agricultural sustainability in Africa.
The overarching vision of Complete Farmer involves ambitious long-term goals, such as geographical expansion into important agricultural regions like Togo and Côte d’Ivoire. This strategic move is expected to diversify Complete Farmer’s operational footprint while establishing a robust presence in emerging markets in West Africa. Simultaneously, the company aspires to continue spearheading the African agricultural revolution through innovation and sustainable growth.
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Written by : Sammy Mwatha, Expert Author
Sammy Mwatha is a skilled content writer who blends business, tech, health, and lifestyle topics with analytical, story-driven insights.
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