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African agriculture has witnessed a wave of innovation over the past two decades, thanks to agritech solutions.
With this came new ways to connect farmers to markets and bring financial services closer to those who need them. These possibilities have drawn founders to solve the sector’s longstanding challenges through technology. But farmers can badly need a solution and still be unable to afford it or unwilling to pay for it.
And for agritech businesses, that gap between solving a problem and building a viable business is where things get interesting. Because the opportunities in agritech do not begin and end with apps.
The Problems an App Can’t Fix
We love how apps have simplified access to farm information, but there are problems no screen can solve. They hit a hard ceiling when confronting the physical and structural realities of the continent’s agricultural sector.
Now, the phone itself. GSMA reported in 2024 that Only 25 per cent of people in sub-Saharan Africa use mobile internet, the lowest rate of any region. A farmer cannot open an app on a phone that sits beyond the household budget. As one analysis put it, “coverage does not equal connectivity.”
Then, the road between the farm and the market. At the 2026 Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, food systems players named poor feeder roads, thin cold storage and fragmented supply chains as the weak points, and Bayer’s Max Müller said fixing these midstream issues is “exactly what will open doorways” for smallholders. A price alert means little when the tomatoes spoil on the road to the buyer.
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That said, we can agree that the underlying architecture is the problem. Roads, storage, power, finance and trust decide whether a farmer earns more, and an app can only sit on top of them.
Infrastructure Is Still a Missing Piece
Infrastructure and agriculture are not strangers. Every harvest depends on power, roads, storage and water long before it depends on a screen, and when these are missing, the cost lands on the farmer. In Africa, the lack of infrastructure works as a “heavy tax on production” that prices African goods out of global markets.
Fixing it will require ingenuity, willpower and the long-term investment needed to close Africa’s agricultural infrastructure gap.
On the farm, that gap takes the form of missing power, roads and ports. Nearly 600 million Africans lack grid electricity, according to data tracked by the International Energy Agency. Even when produce reaches the coast, it can spend weeks waiting at some ports.
The apps also depend on this physical layer, which is, an app can point a farmer to the best price, but only a road can get the harvest there.
Investors Are Bullish on Infrastructure
Unlike in 2022, when agritech funding hit a record, right now investors are putting their money where the physical value chain is.
In its 2024 Africa Report, AgFunder found that Ag Marketplaces and Fintech took the top spot with $65 million, or 41% of total investment on the continent so far that year. Platforms such as Apollo Agriculture and ThriveAgric extend their services beyond the phone.
In the same year, Acumen’s Planting the Seeds of Impact analysis of African agriculture found that most deals went to digital-plus-analog solutions with at least one in-person touch point. It noted that pure-digital companies tend to be “a few degrees disconnected from immediate impact.” Besides, money that flows into agribusinesses that own more of the value chain has grown steadily.
The big deals tell the same story, because according to MOHAC Africa half of the sector’s largest deals in 2025 went to processing and cold-chain logistics companies rather than farm-gate apps for smallholders.
The money that does arrive is largely driven by development finance institutions such as Proparco, British International Investment and the IFC, while traditional venture capital firms tend to write smaller cheques. This helps explain why more funding is finding its way to the infrastructure layer of agriculture.
Who Should Agritech Build For?
Founders should build for players who already have farmers’ trust and control a part of the value chain. In practice, this often means making businesses the first customers. Smallholders remain the people these solutions are meant to serve, but with thin margins and income that comes mostly at harvest, they may struggle to pay for digital products themselves.
With that in mind, the customers worth building for fall into five groups.
- Agribusinesses and off-takers. Processors, aggregators and exporters need reliable supply, traceability and payments, and a smallholder’s first need is a buyer.
- Agro-dealers and input retailers. Software that digitises their sales and inventory is paid for by the dealer, who already sits next to the farmer.
- Cooperatives and farmer organisations. They carry the trusted relationships most digital tools cannot, and one business can reach thousands of farmers through a handful of them.
- Lenders and mobile money providers. Payment data shows production trends that let them offer tailored credit and services.
- Governments and development partners. Public and donor programmes remain a steady source of revenue and funding.
The farmer stays the end user, but the paying customer is increasingly the business that already holds the farmer’s trust, and a founder who builds for that business is better placed to reach farmers at lower cost.
Africa Agritech Beyond Apps
Apps will keep their place in African agriculture, but the businesses that last will be built on roads, storage, power, payments and buyers that farmers can count on.
Investors are already following that logic, and founders who design for the whole value chain will reach more farmers and serve them better.
