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project details

African start-up Industry Mapping: Status quo and Emerging trends in Agriculture and Digitalisation

Research Area

Agri Food Systems

Project Status

Completed

Start Date

Feb, 2023

Researchers

Dr. Elsie Onsongo

Rosebella Nyumba

Judy Kaaria

Project Overview

African start-ups are rapidly becoming essential players in achieving socio-economic development and addressing sustainable development challenges. There is a growing need for innovative solutions that can help Africa leapfrog towards the SDGs, with a particular emphasis on private sector-driven approaches and investments. African start-ups, especially in agriculture, have been identified as key to enhancing value chains, with digitalisation playing a pivotal role due to its scalability and potential to boost productivity.

However, several challenges hinder the growth and scaling of start-ups in Africa, with a critical issue being the general lack of market knowledge. This project seeks to address this gap by examining limitations in market transparency, innovation trends, market structure, and key market agents—namely, the African start-ups themselves.

Objectives

The project’s findings are expected to have a direct impact on African start-ups, national governments, international development organisations like GIZ, investors, and academia. In addition to producing publishable outputs and creating a start-up website, the project will promote knowledge transfer and skill development for African start-ups through collaboration with other GIZ initiatives. Start-ups will be engaged through workshops focusing on innovation archetypes, scaling impact, prototyping, designing pitch decks, and measuring and communicating impact.

To create open-access transparency in the African start-up market related to agriculture and digitalisation, and increase the visibility of African start-ups
To identify consolidated innovation archetypes, key trends and associated level of maturity in the start-up market across value chain stage-specific and support system-specific technology and business model innovations
To identify the role of market support structures for the emergence and scale of African start-ups
To improve the knowledge base for African start-ups

Methodologies

Both qualitative and quantitative methods will be employed including:

Desk research-based data collection on African start-up companies to populate a comprehensive start-up database
On-boarding of African start-ups onto global digital start-up platforms. Scanning the landscape of start-up platforms such as Crunchbase, Pitchbook, AngelList and others.
Mapping the innovations identified onto one or several agriculture value chain stages
To improve the knowledge base for African start-ups