Farmcrowdy, Nigeria’s digital agriculture platform has announced the launch of Nigeria’s first annual National Digital Agriculture Day; as part of celebrations marking the startup’s second year of operations. This comes on the back of the startup winning Best Agritech Solution for 2018 at the AppsAfrica Innovation Awards held in Cape Town, South Africa earlier this week, which attracted entries from 39 countries across the continent.
Registered by the startup with the Ministry of Trademark and Patent, National Digital Agriculture Day has officially been earmarked as a day of recognition of the contributions made to the country’s burgeoning agritech sector. It will be used as a vehicle to highlight the essential role that agriculture plays in building and maintaining a strong economy while encouraging other players in the sector and the public to participate in spreading the positive message about agriculture.
Pioneers of digital agriculture in Nigeria since 2016, Farmcrowdy continues to gain momentum having to date empowered close to 8,000 farmers across 10 states in the country, reared over 1,000,000 broiler birds as part of its poultry farm cycles and recorded over 17,195 farm units, sponsored by more than 2,500 unique farm sponsors from Nigerians in Nigeria, the US, Canada and the UK. Farmcrowdy continues to effectively grow a community model that is set to accelerate the empowerment of local farmers and the facilitation of local and Pan-African food production and sustainability.
Onyeka Akumah, Founder and CEO of Farmcrowdy says, the past two years have been nothing short of a life-changing journey for me and the Farmcrowdy team, and we are expectant for the future as we continue to strive towards scaling our operations and building on our platform. We are immensely proud of the role we have played in the growth of Nigeria’s agritech sector, and are humbled at the support and the opportunities we have received – locally and internationally to showcase our work.
“We are equally pleased to see the recent spring of startups following in Farmcrowdy’s footsteps and are looking forward to utilising the National Digital Agriculture Day in Nigeria as a chance to join hands with other agritech startups on the path of breathing new life into agriculture, by supporting even more smallholder farmers and increasing food production not only in Nigeria, but across Africa.”
Cementing their place as game-changers at the forefront of digital innovation in agriculture, Farmcrowdy has inspired a renewed interest in farming for thousands over the past 2 years. This has resulted in endorsements from the President of Nigeria who conferred Farmcrowdy with National Honours, the Vice President of Nigeria who also sponsored farms with Farmcrowdy to support the initiative, academia, international and local investors and the media. This has resulted in more than 20 awards for the start-up in the last 2 years including, the Agritech Startup Company of the Year 2018 at the Meet the Farmers Conference held in Dubai, and also the Digital Business of the Year in Africa 2018 earlier in the year at the annual Global African Business Awards (GABA) ceremony held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
