Our investment in Wefarm
We always want to back the boldest, most mission-driven companies, and they don’t come more pioneering than Wefarm. Since its founding in 2015, Wefarm has become the world’s largest platform for small-scale farmers. Operating in East Africa, this farmer-to-farmer digital network enables millions of smallholder farmers to connect, buy farming goods and share knowledge.
The company’s vision is for every small-scale farmer to be able to connect with the people and resources they need to achieve their full economic potential. Wefarm is addressing is the largest labour force in the world – with hundreds of millions of farmers world-wide, so the economic potential, both for farmers and for the company, is outstanding.
Scale
There are 400 million smallholder farmers around the world spending $400bn per year on farming inputs. Over the past six years, Wefarm has built a community of highly engaged members, representing around 18% of East Africa’s smallholder market, consisting of some 14 million farms in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Over 37 million conversations have flowed through the platform so far and 30% of the content shared between community members is commercial-related. Wefarm provides connectivity, access to their community’s knowledge, and goods and services to these farmers allowing them to unlock greater economic potential from their land.
“Our goal is to take Wefarm to 100 million farmers, and our thesis is that if we can get those 100 million small-scale farmers working together, on one platform, our members can fundamentally change the global supply chain and give farmers a much more powerful voice,” says founder and CEO Kenny Ewan. “At Wefarm, we know that farmers are a source of knowledge, experience, ideas and innovation and we’re building a trusted platform around this vertical that enables our members to share information and use our marketplace, even through SMS.”
The opportunity
The company has grown its marketplace offering over the past year, where it engages with local retailers to give farmers access to quality inputs at fairer prices. So far, farmers have spent over $29 million on Wefarm’s marketplace.
The online expansion of Wefarm will offer millions of farmers stronger knowledge sharing and commerce opportunities.
The team
Kenny Ewan, CEO and founder lived and worked for seven years in South America, building water systems in indigenous communities. Now with Wefarm, he has recruited a stellar management team consisting of ex-Amazon and ex-Google heavy-hitters.
We are very excited to be working alongside this talented team intent on empowering smallholder farmers to know more, buy and sell smarter, and to bring Africa’s most valuable industry into the digital world.
