The round includes $1.27 million in equity and $230,000 in non-dilutive capital from DEG’s DeveloPPP Ventures programme, which supports early-stage African startups with scalable climate and inclusion impact. 

The equity investment was led by Delta40 Venture Studio, with participation from DRK Foundation, Catalyst Fund, Holocene, Marula Square, 54Co, Levare Ventures, and Mercy Corps Ventures.

Founded in 2021 by Claire Van Enk, Anouk Boertien, and Zara Benosa, Farm to Feed was built to tackle one of Africa’s biggest agricultural inefficiencies, post-harvest food loss. 

Across the continent, as much as 40% of food never reaches consumers, largely due to cosmetic rejection, poor logistics, and limited market access.

Farm to Feed’s platform enables smallholder farmers to sell their entire harvest, including surplus or imperfect produce that would otherwise go to waste. The company aggregates the produce, sells it to food businesses such as restaurants and processors, and provides farmers with new income streams for crops that previously had no market.

The startup reports it has onboarded 6,500 farmers, sold over 2.1 million kilograms of produce, and helped avoid 247 tonnes of CO₂-equivalent emissions.

Farm to Feed began during the COVID-19 lockdowns, when supply chain disruptions left Kenyan farmers unable to sell their produce. 

At the time, Van Enk organised a GoFundMe campaign to purchase unsold crops and distribute them to families in informal settlements. The experience revealed a bigger problem, a systemic lack of market access for “rescue-grade” produce that was still nutritious but visually imperfect.

“We wanted to solve this problem more sustainably and more commercially,” said Van Enk, now CEO of Farm to Feed. “If you grow your own food and one is smaller than the other, I’m quite sure you would consume both because they actually taste the same but look a bit different.”

The new funding will be used to enhance Farm to Feed’s presence across Kenya and expand into regional markets. Part of the plan involves enhancing the company’s digital systems, which already include a mobile and USSD-based platform for farmers and an enterprise management system that supports traceability and logistics.

A key growth area is the company’s semi-processed product line, including chopped, dried, and frozen ingredients, which targets urban retailers and export buyers. 

This value-add segment is central to Farm to Feed’s goal of increasing product preservation and reaching higher-margin markets.

“This funding allows us to expand our reach, connecting more farmers to a market that is increasingly demanding sustainably produced food,” said Van Enk. “As we scale, technology remains at the core of our growth, and we’re excited to enhance our systems to support expansion beyond borders.”

For investors, Farm to Feed sits at the intersection of sustainability, market access, and profitability.

“Farm to Feed maximises farmer incomes by purchasing the full harvest while ensuring that every gram of produce creates value,” said Lyndsay Holley Handler, co-founder and managing partner at Delta40 Venture Studio. “Whether through exports, B2B sales, or value addition, Farm to Feed is creating a true win-win-win for farmers, businesses, and the planet.”

Catalyst Fund, an early backer, is also doubling down. “Farm to Feed is transforming one of Africa’s biggest inefficiencies into one of its greatest opportunities,” said Maelis Carraro, the fund’s founder and managing partner. “We’ve seen Claire and her team turn a bold vision into a scalable, tech-enabled solution that directly boosts farmer incomes, cuts emissions, and strengthens food system resilience.”

Farm to Feed’s raise comes amid growing investor interest in climate-resilient agritech across Africa. Startups such as Apollo Agriculture and Twiga Foods have also attracted significant funding to digitise and optimise supply chains.

For Kenya, the deal stresses a bigger national focus on agro-industrialisation and food system transformation, where technology-driven efficiency and sustainability are becoming investment priorities.

This is in terms of decentralization of raw materials for production, limited financial access, inadequate equipment and many more challenges.

Today, our spotlight shines brightly on some Agritech startups with known records of working to ensure the Agricultural sector thrives in Nigeria, with both farmers, consumers and all stakeholders benefiting from their efforts. 

Not limited to these, they include:

1. ThriveAgric

ThriveAgric is one of the interesting Agritech startups that provides finance to smallholder farmers, but doesn’t stop there. The startup provides them with the best practices needed for their businesses to scale, including access to sell to local and global markets, putting food security at the fore. How nice…

Having onboarded over 400,000 farmers, ThriveAgric has enabled the production and trading of 800,000+ grains, with more than 400,000 hectares of land cultivated. An intriguing aspect is that it has created over 9,000 jobs, helping reduce the big issue of unemployment in Nigeria.

From production to financing, processing and consumption, ThriveAgric’s got the agricultural sector.

2. Releaf

Just yesterday, Releaf raised $3.3 million pre-Series A round and this was to deepen its stand even more as one of the leading Agritech startups in its focus sector. 

Over the last few years, Releaf has built high-end technology — including Kraken — to solve the agricultural problems in Nigeria. The startup keeps finding ways to make these technologies better. 

With the pre-Series A fund raises, it seeks to launch even more products such as Kraken II, which is mobile and more affordable than the initial palm nut de-sheller, eliminating over 80% of margin-eroding costs. The startup will also launch SITE, a geospatial mapping application that discloses food processing assets.

Not limited to the above, Releaf also provides capital to farmers and food factories, helping the purchase require tools and ensure the seamless running of their day-to-day operations.

3. Agricorp

Agricorp is majorly focused on spice production and exportation, with the healthy ginger being a major. Following its success over the years, seeing a 400% capacity growth just within three years of existence, the startup expanded its focus to include poultry production, processing and distribution. 

Its semi-mechanized processing facility located in Kaduna can be used to process over 5,000MT of ginger annually. The startup provides employment opportunities to a large population from all classes and supports farmers financially and in other areas.

Its medium-scale 0.5MT/hour integrated spices processing equipment is used in the production of clean fresh ginger, dried ginger, ginger powder, dehydrated garlic powder, chilli powder, dehydrated onion powder, and lime powder.

4. Vendease

Vendease founders — Wale Oyepeju, Tunde Kara, Olumide Fayankin and Gatumi Aliyu 

Vendease is an Agritech startup that breaks barriers in the supply chain between food businesses like restaurants and farmers/manufacturers. 

How does this work? The startup leverages a technology where customers can place orders, and all possible suppliers are shown. The system assigns the order to the supplier with the best pricing and quality, with delivery within 24 hours. The good thing is that all supplies can be gotten from a single source.

Vendease will handle all your procurement without fear of disappointment and also provide analytics to help users track spends. To provide better services, it has built a series of stacks including logistics, storage, payments, inventory management, embedded finance. Users can buy now and opt to pay within 14 days.

5. Hello Tractor

Just as the name implies, Hello Tractor connects tractor owners to smallholder farmers, providing income to the owners and enabling farmers carry out related activities effectively, thereby enhancing production yield.

The startup also ensures the tracking and management of the tractor fleet remotely, with bookings managed via mobile and web applications. So there’s no fear of losing your tractor. 

Interestingly, the startup also helps users access innovative pay-as-you-go financing, helping them grow their own fleet. 

6. Farmcrowdy

Sustainability being its goal, Farmcrowdy provides the means for key players in the food value chain to maximum output and yield “untapped profits” and provides more efficient food distribution channels.

Farmcrowdy also makes life easy for farmers to an extent, providing finances needed for growth, a major issue faced in the sector.

Its tech-enabled B2B retail platform, FC Shops helps small retailers source their inventory, accessing a wide variety of FMCG goods at wholesale prices, while its FC Foods is a one-stop digital marketplace for trading raw agro-products, inputs and commodities.

7. Zowasel

Making it easy for traders to access local and international markets, as well as credit to finance, Zowasel offers easy, fast accessible technology to increase farmers’ productivity, provide quality crops and increase revenues.

The startup leverages data science and artificial intelligence to facilitate its efforts, helping smallholder farmers from seed planting stage to market reach.

In its endeavors to provide finances for farmers, Zowasel has partnered with several financial institutions including VBank and SimpliFi, and has collaborated with several organizations to facilitate affordable agricultural machinery for smallholder farmers.

8. Afrimash

Afrimash specializes in sales of agricultural products. It is a digital marketplace which helps farmers reach maximum profitability. 

The sustainability and profitability driven Agritech startup connects farmers to quality inputs and helps them build their digital identities to enable better access to financial support. It also provides access to consultants via mobile channels or online to improve productivity.

To achieve its goal, the startup has partnered with manufacturers, importers, and wholesalers of quality items to create a marketplace where they sell their products to farmers. Its secure payment systems stimulates the delivery of ordered items directly to farmers wherever they are in Nigeria.