The Government of Australia has invested in Agrihive, a collaborative organization, which launched Farmecco, a fintech platform for farmers.

Starting in Australia’s beef industry, Farmecco aims to increase the net wealth of Australia’s farmers by capturing all the financial elements of their businesses in an online program and generating live reports that will help them to review all their costs and improve their revenues. 

It focuses specifically on improving the number of units farmers sell, and improving the price of the units they sell, but also provides key information to help farmers with succession planning, a core concern as the average age of Australia’s farmers continues to increase.

These tailored reports, which Farmecco can turn around in an hour after farmers input their information, can also be used by farmers in their interactions with lenders, accountants, law firms, consultants as well as family members, also helping to improve performance.

Farmecco raised $600,000 in seed funding from Australia’s Department of Agriculture and Australia’s meat industry association Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA). 

It is always a shame when Nigerian governments come out to celebrate opening of sales offices by big multinational corporations. In most parts of the world, government officials come out only when there is an opening of a research and development center or something big.

In Abuha, Oracle Corp was opening a sales office and Nigerian leaders were everywhere to drive home the constructs of consumerism which our technology has become.

Reinforcing its commitment to Africa, Oracle announced the opening of a new office in Abuja that will focus exclusively on driving cloud adoption across Nigeria’s Public Sector. Yes, public contracts!

Key dignitaries including Barrister Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu, Honorable Minister of Communications, Federal Republic of Nigeria; William Stuart Symington, the United States Ambassador to Nigeria; Alhaji Yahaya Bello, Executive Governor of Kogi State; Cherian Varghese, Vice President – Technology, Africa, Oracle and Adebayo Sanni, Country Managing Director – Nigeria, Oracle attended a launch event at the new office to mark the milestone.

“Opening the Abuja office underscores our commitment to Nigeria by enhancing our local capabilities and service offerings,” said Cherian Varghese. “Nigeria’s Public Sector is focused on delivering transparent, efficient and proactive services to its citizens. Our aim will be supporting the government implement its vision with a modern, secure, and cost-effective suite of cloud solutions built specifically for the public sector.”

And the head of IT ministry has some good words.

“ICT innovation is vital for improving the citizen experience, driving new investment opportunities, enhancing government revenue and identifying new growth avenues”, said Barrister Abdur-Raheem Adebayo Shittu. “By 2020, Nigeria will be one of the 20 largest economies of the world and we will be able to realize our full economic and social potential only if we become early adopters of modern technology. Oracle is at the forefront of delivering technologically advanced cloud solutions and we congratulate the company’s Africa leadership for expanding their footprint in Nigeria.”

Now, the contracting begins. They are in and the local companies are surely out.