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    ujuzikilimo

    By George Munene

    UjuziKilimo is a Kenyan ag­ritech star­tup that col­lects and ana­lyses ag­ri­cul­tural data geared to­wards en­abling the world's small­holder farm­ers to im­prove their pro­ductiv­ity and re­duce risks through data-driven pre­ci­sion in­sights.

    This data provides farm­ers gran­u­lar in­form­a­tion on per­son­al­ised weather pat­terns, mar­ket in­form­a­tion, proper ag­ro­nomic prac­tices, in­sur­ance op­tions, etc. This en­ables them to prac­tice know­ledge-driven ag­ri­cul­ture; mak­ing smarter de­cisions such as what crops to plant and exact amounts of in­puts to apply, and when to har­vest for bet­ter prof­it­ab­il­ity.

    Small­holder farm­ers op­er­ate over 70 per cent of Africa's farm­land. Des­pite this, the scope of data ap­plic­a­tion by these 33 mil­lion small­holder farms re­mains largely minus­cule. This is des­pite its ob­vi­ous be­ne­fits in lift­ing farm yields and earn­ings.  

    Foun­ded in 2014, some of the ser­vices the com­pany of­fers to farm­ers in­clude:

    Soil test­ing  

    Soil tests are con­duc­ted through the use of a hand­held sensor to quickly and eas­ily meas­ure the pH levels, mac­ronu­tri­ents (NPK), elec­trical con­duct­iv­ity, and or­ganic con­tent of your soil.

    Re­lated News: Ag­ritech star­tup giv­ing mar­ket to small-scale ba­nana, pump­kin, sweet potato, ar­row­root & yam grow­ers

    Re­lated News: Kilifi farmer triples cas­sava yield through min­is­ett mul­ti­plic­a­tion tech­nique

    Through a monthly sub­scrip­tion, farm­ers get an un­lim­ited num­ber of soil tests, tech­nical sup­port, fer­til­izer and lime ap­plic­a­tion re­com­mend­a­tions. These are re­layed as real-time re­ports and re­com­mend­a­tions through SMS. Farm­ers can also man­age all the data on their Farms­suite ac­count.

    Farm­suite 

    This is a cloud re­pos­it­ory that stores all your user-spe­cific farm­ing data. Ran­ging from the basic free plan to the Sh1,615/year Super Farmer bou­quet, farm­ers get ser­vices such as un­lim­ited farmer quer­ies through SMS, farm input in­sur­ance, mar­ket data and link­ages, yield es­tim­a­tion, input fin­an­cing, re­ports and ana­lyt­ics, satel­lite-based crop pro­tec­tion re­com­mend­a­tions, di­gital ag­ro­nomy ser­vices, seed and fer­til­iser re­com­mend­a­tions, com­pre­hens­ive macro and micro soil tests and weekly weather up­dates.

    Ujuzi Data 

    UjuziK­limo pro­cesses mil­lions of data points daily and uses them to cre­ate a spe­cific and highly ac­cur­ate soil and ag­ro­nomic data pool. Lever­aging this ag­ro­nomic data, farm­ers can have bet­ter in­sights and tailored high-level ana­lyt­ics re­ports that re­fine their de­cision-mak­ing pro­cesses.

    The com­pany has earned re­cog­ni­tion and ac­col­ades from bod­ies such as the African in­nov­a­tion fund and the royal academy of en­gin­eer­ing. 

    In May last year, it re­ceived Sh18 mil­lion worth of tech­nical fund­ing from Wad­son Ven­tures cap­ital firm. 

    Re­lated News: App helps farm­ers re­motely man­age & hire tract­ors

    “Through the US$ 174,000 worth part­ner­ship com­mit­ment, UjuziKilimo will be able to scale its op­er­a­tions, provid­ing in­tel­li­gent ag­ro­nomy in­form­a­tion to eli­gible small­holder farm­ers af­fil­i­ated to se­lec­ted co-op­er­at­ive so­ci­et­ies, na­tional and county gov­ern­ment agen­cies. Co-op­er­at­ives in­ter­ested in re­ceiv­ing free sup­port should sign up by the UjuziKilimo web­site,” UjuziKilimo founder and CEO Brian Bosire said. 

    Ujuzi Kilimo

    This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

    Tel: +254 (0) 20 2008408

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    Hits: 5837

    Pula logo

    By George Munene

    Pula, a Kenyan ag­ri­cul­tural in­sur­ance and tech­no­logy com­pany, is of­fer­ing small­holder farm­ers in­nov­at­ive and af­ford­able crops and live­stock in­sur­ance cover for as little as Sh500 to Sh1000. 

    This, coupled with the firm’s di­gital products such as the Pula mo­bile app is help­ing often un­in­sured and over­looked small-scale farm­ers en­dure the risk of yield losses, im­prove their farm­ing prac­tices and con­sequently bol­ster their in­comes.

    While over 60 per­cent of Africa's pop­u­la­tion con­sti­tutes small­holder farm­ers, the value of premi­ums for ag­ri­cul­tural in­sur­ance in Africa rep­res­ents less than 0.7 per­cent. This leaves most of the con­tin­ent’s pop­u­la­tion in a per­il­ous po­s­i­tion given that over 2 bil­lion people in Africa de­pend to vary­ing de­grees on small-scale farm­ing.

    Re­lated News: Co­oper­at­ive in­surer launches new pro­ject to cover over 250,000 Kenyan farm­ers with live­stock mi­croin­sur­ance

    Re­lated News: Gov­ern­ment launches live­stock in­sur­ance policy to help farm­ers pre­vent losses

    This low up­take of in­sur­ance by farm­ers can largely be blamed on ex­tort­ive premi­ums and the un­re­li­ab­il­ity of in­sur­ing agents.

    Foun­ded in 2015 by co-CEOs Thomas Njeru and Rose Gos­linga, the com­pany’s op­er­a­tions ex­tend over 13 coun­tries and it has on­boarded over 4.6 mil­lion African farm­ers thus far.

    Pula re­gisters farm­ers on­line through a mo­bile phone app. Break­through tech­no­logy such as ma­chine learn­ing al­gorithms is then em­ployed to bunch farm­ers with sim­ilar land pro­files. These di­gital tools are then used in the field to as­sess claims. Such in­nov­at­ive tools have en­abled the com­pany to keep its premi­ums low and with Brazil and India ear­marked as its next fron­ti­ers, also grow its busi­ness. 

    "If you use the tra­di­tional model of pro­posal forms and policy doc­u­ments, the num­bers won't add up," he said. "To be able to de­liver such a low-cost product at that price you have to use tech­no­logy and most com­pan­ies don't have that ca­pa­city, " ex­plained Thomas Njeru to Re­u­ters.

    Re­lated News: An af­ford­able in­sur­ance cover for Small­holder farm­ers in Kenya

    The com­pany works with gov­ern­ments, NGOs, and private sec­tor play­ers to de-risk their ag­ri­cul­tural in­vest­ments as well as ac­cel­er­ate their im­pact within the ag­ribusi­ness space. In Kitui, the firm has worked with the World Food Pro­gramme (WFP) for the past three years provid­ing crop in­sur­ance to some 10,000 farm­ers and is­sued crop loss com­pens­a­tions amount­ing to. Sh82.5 mil­lion.

    Pula app: Pula

    Pula Kenya: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it./

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    Hits: 6311

    DSC 00311

    By George Munene


    Latia Farm loc­ated at Seis­ing, off the Isinya Kiserian road, sits on some 60 acres, 38 acres of which are cur­rently under use, in a grand, private-sec­tor ad­ven­ture of ag­ri­cul­tural train­ing and in­nov­a­tion.


    The farm has lec­ture halls, dorm­it­or­ies and a res­taur­ant to offer six month ap­pren­tice­ship courses to some 1000 form four leav­ers yearly— a quarterly in­take of 250 stu­dents. The ap­pren­tices are given prac­tical farm­ing ex­per­i­ence on al­most every facet of farm­ing; crop farm­ing, spe­cial­ized hor­ti­cul­ture and an­imal hus­bandry. The pro­gram, which is part sponsored by Kenya Com­mer­cial Bank, of­fers loaned train­ing, feed­ing and board, which the train­ees pay off from the pro­duce they grow and is sold out­side the farm. On com­plet­ing the course, Latia, also helps them get in­tern­ship place­ments. Re­cruits for the pro­gram are sought from across the coun­try with the help of county of­fi­cials.

    Re­lated News:KCB sets out to launch 28,000 green­houses for youth to earn a liv­ing

    Prac­tical farm­ing ex­per­i­ence is also offered to farm­ers who are look­ing to learn in­tens­ive/in­nov­at­ive farm­ing meth­ods. This is given as a four day Thursday to Sunday crash course at a Sh1000 daily charge.


    Con­sultancy and mar­ket­ing ser­vices, es­pe­cially to first time farm­ers look­ing to avoid the pit­falls many ag­ri­pren­eurs en­dure when start­ing out are also a part of their of­fer­ing.


    The farm is com­part­ment­al­ised with areas of­fer­ing open field and green­house farm­ing as well a 7 acre Ag­ritech sec­tion which serves as an in­nov­a­tion hub. David Kim­waki, an ag­ro­nom­ist at the farm, says they have worked out ways of using earth­worms to de­com­pose ma­nure used as or­ganic fo­liar. They are also re­fin­ing the use of shade nets, which are much cheaper, as a stand in for green­houses.

    Re­lated News:Nairobi’s Karen farmer bets on un­pop­u­lar snail farm­ing for cash

    Re­lated News:Nairobi-based mo­bile com­merce ag­ri­cul­ture star­tup re­ceives $627,000 in seed fund­ing

    They are stretches of maize fields as well as French beans which grown for the ex­port mar­ket. The farm is re­plete with green­houses used to house to­ma­toes. Ma­jor­ing in hor­ti­cul­ture; sukuma wikis, cab­bages, onions, cap­sic­ums, broc­colis, but­ter­nuts, cu­cum­bers and cauli­flowers are a fix­ture on the farm. They also grow in­di­gen­ous ve­g­gies such as the spider plant, black night­shade and man­agu. The farm has 10 cows, pigs, milk goats, chick­ens and has just got­ten into rab­bit keep­ing.


    Latia Farm: 0716 431054

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