More farmers are going digital to cash in their harvest, thanks to new credit plans being rolled out in several countries in Africa to streamline financing for agricultural production.
Bonface Orucho, bird story agency
Farmers in Africa are building digital credit profiles from their seeds, soils, and harvests. Beyond boosting yields, this is transforming agricultural activity into financial visibility.
Seeds as collateral
A Ghanaian agronomist, Alma Nwosu, still remembers her first phone call with a farmer named Kofi Mensah in the eastern region of Ghana. Mr Mensah had just harvested maize grown from seeds supplied on credit by Degas, an Accra-based agri-fintech. Each bag of seed carried a QR code, and every repayment was logged into a digital file.
“When he told me he had a credit history now, not with a bank but with his seeds, it was interesting, at first,” Ms Nwosu explained in a telephone call. “We are seeing more farmers becoming visible to the financial system through the crops they grow.”
That shift is at the heart of a US$100 million investment Degas secured to expand this model across Ghana. The financing, led by a consortium of Japanese and African investors, will allow the company to scale what is being described as a “credit bureau for seeds,” enabling smallholder farmers to build digital credit profiles through their agricultural production.
The deal marks one of the largest agri-fintech raises in West Africa this year and illustrates how agricultural data is being transformed into a tool for financial access across the continent.
Digital finance gains ground
Across sub-Saharan Africa, more than 70 per cent of smallholder farmers now have access to mobile money services, enabling digital transactions that can inform financial inclusion and credit assessments, according to the World Bank.
Current trends are a clear break from the past decade, when agricultural lending was dominated by informal credit and collateral requirements few smallholders could meet.
In Kenya, the government launched the national rollout of the Electronic Warehouse Receipt System (e-WRS) in February 2025, aiming to digitise the country’s warehouse receipt and commodity trading processes, according to the Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock Development.
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The rollout is supported by a series of stakeholder training programs designed to build confidence and promote adoption across countries.The system now allows maize, wheat, and beans stored in certified warehouses to be used as collateral for commercial bank loans, with digital records providing transparency.
In July, Senegal’s Ministry of Agriculture, Food Sovereignty and Livestock (MASAE) introduced a digitised fertilizer subsidy program using mobile money, part of what officials called a broader “agri-digital shift.” According to TechAfrica News, this modernises the country’s long-running agricultural input subsidy program by logging each redemption into farmer records, creating repayment histories that lenders can reference when evaluating creditworthiness.
Meanwhile, climate-linked agricultural finance is also taking root. Morocco, battling one of its driest years on record, rolled out smart irrigation pilots in its Souss-Massa region in 2025. Government statements note that the deployment of AI-enabled soil and moisture sensors – optimising water use while feeding performance data into farmer credit files has effectively linked sustainable water management with financial visibility.
Redefining creditworthiness
According to experts, these developments signal a new definition of what constitutes a financial footprint in African agriculture. An agricultural extension officer based in Kisumu, Abel Otwoma, believes Africa is now at a point where creditworthiness for smallholders, who were invisible to banks, is increasingly defined by the crops they plant, the inputs they redeem, and the environmental practices they adopt.
“This is a fundamental reimagining of rural (agricultural) finance. We are seeing the emergence of entirely new credit ecosystems, rooted not just in salary slips or bank statements, but also in farming activity itself,” he explained.
Global investors eye Africa’s digital farms
The geopolitical weight of these shifts is not lost on global investors. Food security is at the center of international debates, and Africa, with more than 60 per cent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), has become a focal point.
Digital agriculture is increasingly positioned as both a growth driver and a strategic asset, giving countries leverage in global trade and climate negotiations. Notably, Degas’s US$100 million raise is not an isolated case.
In Kenya, Apollo Agriculture is now scoring farmers by tracking input usage and yield performance across more than two million smallholders, according to Agritech Digest.
Nigeria’s ThriveAgric, alongside platforms such as AgroMall, Crop2Cash, and HerVest, is using supply-chain and financing data to assess farmers’ creditworthiness and expand input access. In Tanzania, apps such as MazaoHub and Ardhi ni Hazina are digitising farm operations and analytics to inform tailored financial services, according to The Citizen.
“Solutions are translating farm-level activity into tailored financial visibility. We will soon be at a point where farmers will no longer be asking, ‘will the bank take my land as collateral?’. They will be asking, ‘how can I make sure every seed I plant and every practice I adopt is recorded?’ because that is what will get me credit next season,” Mr Otwoma said.
Policy and institutional support
Regional policy is also adapting to this ongoing shift. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) secretariat announced in June 2025 that it is working with regional economic communities to harmonise digital agricultural data standards, aiming to ensure that cross-border financing can flow more easily.
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Multilateral institutions are stepping up in Africa’s agri-digital transformation. The African Development Bank (AfDB) in March 2025 proposed a US$500 million facility aimed at unlocking US$10 billion in financing for smallholder farmers and agribusinesses across the continent.
According to then AfDB President, Akinwumi Adesina at a Nairobi conference, this facility will use trade-credit guarantees, blended finance, and technical assistance to lower the high transaction costs that block financial inclusion for rural producers. Private capital continues to signal strong interest in agritech.
Investment momentum in agri-fintech
While 2024 saw a moderate recovery, with just US$145 million raised in the first half of the year, platforms in the Agricultural Marketplaces and Fintech category captured 41 per cent of that investment, according to AgFunder’s Africa AgriFoodTech Investment Report. That momentum is carrying into 2025, with deals such as Nile’s recent US$11.3 million raise to expand its agricultural inputs marketplace and roll out new financing solutions for farmers across Southern Africa.
The deal, led by Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund with participation from FMO, reflects a wider investor push into models that tie credit directly to farm activities and input supply chains.
AgFunder’s 2024 Developing Markets report revealed a 63 per cent year-over-year jump in agrifoodtech investment from 2023 to 2024. The rise was driven largely by upstream digital finance and marketplace models.
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