Nigeria’s Foodlocker, Kenya’s Mhogo Foods and Nigeria’s ReLeaf have emerged as winners in the African Development Bank’s $120,000 AgriPitch competition.
These agritech businesses won cash prizes in the categories listed below:
Mature Start-ups
- Winner: Femi Aiki, Foodlocker, Nigeria ($40,000)
- Runner-Up: Noel N’guessan, Lono, Côte d’Ivoire ($20,000)
Women-empowered Businesses
- Winner: Elizabeth Gikebe, Mhogo Foods, Kenya ($20,000)
- Runner-Up: Oluwaseun Sangoleye, Baby Grubz, Nigeria ($10,000)
Early Start-ups
- Winner: Ikenna Nzewi, Releaf, Nigeria ($20,000)
- Runner-Up: David Matsiko, Bringo Fresh, Uganda ($10,000)
Foodlocker CEO Femi Aiki, said the seed funding provides “a lot of fuel for the road. He said one of the major areas where Foodlocker needs support is working capital.
Foodlocker offers procurement efficiency, affordability, convenience, and pricing regularity to diverse buyers of farm-fresh foodstuff and grocery items by aggregating the outputs of smallholder farmers and fast-moving consumer goods companies and selling them directly to our customers via our unique omni-channel retail operations.
“Now we can afford to buy more inputs. We can now afford to bring on board more experts in those value chains who can support smallholder farmers more remotely…That money will support the company to get results,” he added.
Foodlocker was recently accepted in Founders Factory Africa Venture Scale programme.
“I was so excited when I heard my name [called],” said Elizabeth Gikebe, founder of Mhogo Foods in Kenya, who won the women-empowered businesses category $20,000 prize. Gikebe says she entered Mhogo Foods – a company that adds value to cassava production by processing the tubers into gluten-free flour, cassava snacks and animal feeds – into the competition in 2018 and again in 2019 without success. She says she’s glad she didn’t give up.
“With a lot of persistence, you can get what you are looking for. It showed me that everything has its time,” Gikebe said.
“To be chosen from such a qualified list of businesses is always exciting,” said Ikenna Nzewi, the early start-up category winner, representing Releaf, a food pre-processing technology company. Started by Nigerian-American graduates from MIT, Yale, and Duke universities who set up shop in Uyo, Nigeria, Releaf plans to save the $20,000 competition prize for future investment.
“We are very confident about the work that we are doing to catalyze industrialization in food processing. It is excellent to see the African Development Bank with its High 5s focus – one of them being industrialization – to also be supporting us,” Nzewi added.
Held virtually, AgriPitch saw more than 2,500 applications and 605 proposals from 30 countries shortlisted down to 25 finalists from 12 countries. The finalists qualified for a two-week business development boot camp, and then a select top 9 AgriPitch competitors made their final pitches to an online panel of judges and investors.
The AgriPitch competition was part of the Bank’s fourth African Youth Agripreneurs Forum (AYAF) – one of the continent’s most exciting platforms for African youth in the agriculture start-up scene – which kicked off on 3 November with weekly webinars and ended with the AgriPitch winners’ ceremony.
In addition to receiving seed funding prizes and post-competition mentoring, AgriPitch winners will be invited to the AYAF online DealRoom, which connects expansion-ready, youth-led African businesses with global investors.
