Cellulant has, in a move to empower Africa’s agricultural producers, hosted its inaugural partners’ summit in Lagos, Nigeria and used the event to encourage the sector to leverage on technology to help block inefficiency and wastages in Africa’s agricultural value chain courtesy of its improved payment and marketplace solutions, Tingg and Agrikore.
Cellulant already has two platforms – Tingg, a payment solution accessible to everyone and Agrikore, a platform built on blockchain technology – which connects all players in the agriculture sector in over 120 African countries.
The summit themed, ‘Technology for Transformation: Connecting Everyone to Nigeria’s $50 billion Agribusiness Opportunity & Creating Jobs for Africa’s Youth’ was attended by development partners including the African Development Bank, Shared Agent Network Expansion Facility (SANEF), Flutterwave, financial institutions and many food processing companies.
In a presentation entitled ‘Payments Laying Down the Foundation for Connecting Africa’, Ken Njoroge, Cellulant’s joint CEO, said Africa has a comparative advantage in agriculture but needs efficiency in its value chain to achieve the desired impact on food security, job creation and economic development.
“If you bring efficiency into the agricultural value-chain, ensure that crops don’t rot on farms, trucks operate regularly, there are no youth unemployed in rural areas, and no factory producing below capacity; if we can connect these dots, we can bring efficiency that can power the transformation of Nigeria and Africa all across the board,” he said.
Njoroge added that Agrikore and Tingg have been tested and affirmed to be connecting everyone involved in agricultural production while boosting transparency.
“The marketplace and payment platforms are connecting everyone. The payment platform ensures that everyone gets paid in real-time as transactions happen. We know it’s working, we are working with 120 banks on the continent; large businesses are our customers. This is a collaboration that continues to benefit all parties,” he said.
Bolaji Akinboro, the other joint CEO of Cellulant, added that Tingg and Agrikore 2.0 provide access to the marketplace, increase transparency and simplifies the whole agriculture value chain.
“Our payment platform allows the farmer, aggregator, supplier, everyone to see how money is flowing in the system. It is for people who want to be part of an ecosystem that is profitable for them and which also provides jobs for hundreds of people,” he said.
Akinboro in his presentation titled, ‘From Farm to Fork: Transforming the Agribusiness in Nigeria Through Technology-What does the Future Hold’, emphasised the need to strengthen the Nigeria’s agriculture value chain so as to derive maximum benefits in the entire sector.
Highlighting Cellulant’s strides in improving Africa’s agriculture value chain, Akinboro said: “We are not just a technology fintech company; we have the technology and operations via Agrikore. When you combine technology and operations, you can change the world. We are providing technology that makes life better for everyone; Nigerians and Africans.
“Technology is a critical enabler to solve many of the challenges experienced in the agriculture sector. In the last 15 years, Cellulant has actively contributed to connecting all key stakeholders in the value chain, who in the past never interacted with each other. Today, the business has built a marketplace and payments platform that provides access to markets, digital financial services, and opens opportunities for all stakeholders to collaborate better and capture the $50 billion market opportunity.”
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