I saw the traffic on the 30 agricultural business ideas I shared few days. It seems the interest is huge. So, I am moving two key contents (text form of the 30 agro ideas, and how to commercialize agro business ideas) out of the subscription area to the free section. The videos on the ideas and commercialization strategies are provided along with the text versions for those who cannot watch videos (we do hope data price drops). The contents are biased for Africa and specifically the great nation of Nigeria.

30 Agro and Agtech Business Ideas

[This was originally shared in the subscriber area; now declassified]

There are many opportunities in the Nigerian (and indeed African) agriculture sector for entrepreneurs to unlock, starting from the traditional agro-businesses to the evolving agricultural technology (agtech) businesses. We have listed some of the ideas in this piece where we noted that agriculture could be on its way to $1 trillion cumulative revenue in Africa within seven years. Agriculture employs more than 65% of Africa’s working population, making it a very important part of our economy. It presents immense opportunities because the sector is still at infancy, and can only grow looking at the renewed efforts by investors, entrepreneurs, farmers and governments to deepen African competitiveness through agricultural production and processing.

I do believe that we would reach $1 trillion before 2025 with the pace of incremental innovation in the sector. The disruptive innovation is not anywhere around because critical infrastructures like electricity and storage facilities that would enable such are not readily available yet. Nonetheless, African agriculture is getting the attention of many people in the continent at the moment.

At a broad level, we have noted ways entrepreneurs can play in the sector:

• Precision agriculture by making sensors: here, you make electronic sensors; may be a little hard depending on your skill level
• Agriculture insurance technology: making insurance products geared for farming
• Agro lending technology: delivering capital to farmers at scale supported by technology
• Agro financing – investing in farmers and farms through digital aggregators
• Direct Farming: owning farms and growing crops and/or raising farm animals
• Farming ecommerce: expanding farmers’ markets by providing digital platforms for trade
• Pricing aggregation: facilitating trading through provision of produce price data
• Storage: African farmers struggle with storage of produce. Building solutions in this area will be catalytic
• Logistics: there is a huge opportunity to facilitate the delivery of produce from rural areas to urban areas across Africa with our poor road networks
• Digitization of transactions: from payment to tracing origins of produce, we have a huge need to digitize farming systems in Africa
• Commodity trading: building exchanges for trading commodities
• Farm digitization: most farms must be digitized for them to be tech-ready
• Others: there are opportunities like making digital tools farmers can use. These could include farm diary, mapping solutions, etc

In this video, we break these themes further, making it simpler to see the opportunities. From agtech to the traditional farming, I explain how one can build businesses in Nigeria in the broad agricultural sector.

Ways to Commercialize Agro Ventures

[This was originally shared in the subscriber area; now declassified]

As promised after the publication of 30 Agro and Agtech Business Ideas for Africa that we would publish mechanisms to move most of the ideas into products, we are here sharing practical systems and processes with enablers on how anyone in Africa can get into this game. The driving philosophy is to execute locally and effectively transition the ideas into product-opportunities in local communities.

Before we delve into the structured mechanisms and practical components, we present seven ways anyone can enter into a new agriculture sector or area in Nigeria: representation, licensing, franchising, partnership, JV, acquisition, startup/scratch (all are extensively explained here).

There are many opportunities in the Nigerian (and indeed African) agriculture sector for entrepreneurs to unlock, starting from the traditional agro-businesses to the evolving agricultural technology (agtech) businesses. We have listed some of the ideas in this piece where we noted that agriculture could be on its way to $1 trillion cumulative revenue in Africa within seven years. Agriculture employs more than 65% of Africa’s working population, making it a very important part of our economy. It presents immense opportunities because the sector is still at infancy, and can only grow looking at the renewed efforts by investors, entrepreneurs, farmers and governments to deepen African competitiveness through agricultural production and processing

Zenvus Boundary which helps farmers to map the boundaries of their farms and farmlands continues to do well. Also, real estate professionals have found value in using it to do the first level estimate of property sizes before they invest in the real professional surveys. In other words, while the person wants to sell the land to you, there may be a need to know the actual size of the land.

With Zenvus Boundary installed in your phone, you can walk around the land and within seconds you will know exactly what the actual size is. We never claimed that Zenvus Boundary is replacing professional surveys.  We do believe that it does not make sense to spend money with professional surveyors only for the deal to fall through. But when the deal goes through or about to go through on condition-precedent, you can invest in professional surveyors. We have 32 Enterprise Partners across Africa; 90% are professional surveyors. They use Zenvus Boundary to scan lands and know the size immediately.

One Enterprise Partner can map as many farms as possible at once, with no limitation. In other words, you can enter a village with one app download and map 1,000 farmlands for 1,000 farmers. If you are in real estate or survey business, this is the app for you.

Meanwhile, download Zenvus Boundary now at Google Play.

We are still accepting Enterprise Partners (learn more here).

Zenvus Boundary maps farm, land or house perimeter boundaries, calculates the areas and populates the data onto Google Earth. From Zenvus portal, the surveys can be downloaded or printed. It supports cooperatives, governments and individual farmers, enabling these entities to have survey reports at a fraction of the typical cost of surveys.

Property owners (farmers, landlords, home owners, etc) can do this without any external help. And when done, register with their cooperatives which help them ratify the boundaries with governments. We use this to formalize farmlands and properties, enabling financial inclusion like agro-lending, using farmlands as collateral.

A farmer upon using Zenvus Boundary can download a PDF of the farm boundary report (sample here) in Zenvus account. The Zenvus Boundary also enables cooperatives or unions to have their logos and names emboldened in the reports for each member farm.