Farmcrowdy Limited, Nigeria’s first and leading Agritech company founded in 2016 with the aim of empowering farmers by using technology to connect them with agribusiness services, has announced today that it will now operate under new leadership.
Onyeka Akumah who is the Founder of Farmcrowdy is returning fully to lead the day-to-day affairs of the Agriculture Technology Startup as Kenneth Obiajulu steps down as the Managing Director.
Kenneth Obiajulu was previously the Managing Director of Farmgate Africa which was a subsidiary of Farmcrowdy until a merger happened in July 2019. He was then appointed as the Managing Director of Farmcrowdy until June 2020, when he mutually agreed on his exit as the company looks to take a new turn away from its crowdfunding model. Onyeka Akumah has since taken charge of the day-to-day running of the start-up and restructured the company as a technology-first startup focused on Agriculture.
Under this new leadership, Onyeka Akumah will use his in-depth expertise and experience to create tech and innovative products for agriculture and agriculture businesses as Chief Executive Officer. Some other changes within the startup’s leadership will see another co-founder Akindele Phillips become the Chief Risk Officer of Farmcrowdy, while Olu Ojo recently joined the startup as Chief Financial Officer.
Ifeanyi Anazodo who is also a co-founder is now the Chief Growth Officer, while Sola Oyawale who was the Deputy Managing Director of the company is now the Chief Operations Officer. The 4th co-founder, Christopher Abiodun continues to lead as the Chief Technology Officer of the company and takes a major role in establishing Farmcrowdy as the leading Agtech business in the country.
In light of this new development and the opportunities that exist in the agriculture value chain across Africa, Farmcrowdy has further announced that the company will now be focused on creating impact by building tools and providing resources to empower farmers using technology with the introduction of new products.
These products and services were set up to serve all individuals across the entire agriculture value chain prioritizing giving stakeholder access to better yields, lower costs and smarter marketing and Farmcrowdy will officially discontinue the crowdfunding arm of the business. The new Farmcrowdy products now include Farmcrowdy Structured Finance, Farmcrowdy Aggregation (with 101 centers nationwide), Farmcrowdy Foods (with Bestfoods and Meathub), Farmcrowdy Insurance, Farmcrowdy Marketing Services, and Farmcrowdy Tech & Data.
According to Onyeka Akumah, ‘’Today, the excitement in Farmcrowdy is similar to when we first launched this business in November of 2016. We are now more than ever, using technology to create sustainable solutions for over 100,000 farmers and participants in the food value chain within our network. Moving away from the original crowdfunding model, we are connecting the agriculture value chain participants to structured finance, insurance, market access, and data all powered by the technology we build in-house. Farmcrowdy is now first a technology company and then an agribusiness partnering with key stakeholders like governments, DFIs, and financial institutions to create innovative ways to boost food production and sustainability within Agriculture.”
Onyeka Akumah returns as CEO of Farmcrowdy
Onyeka also said that there are millions of people living daily from agriculture, so the true impact for the 3-year-old start-up will be to provide its services at scale to every participant in the food value chain within the shortest time possible.
Since its inception, Farmcrowdy has amassed a network of over 300,000 farmers within its network, cultivated close to 20,000 acres of farmland, reared 3 million broiler birds, and deployed over 15 million dollars in funds for farming projects across 36 states in Nigeria.
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