The presence of digital farming, precision agriculture, etc, has solidified the knowledge that technology has a lot to offer to the agricultural sector. With new advances and discoveries being made in the area of artificial intelligence, biotechnology and nanotechnology, and a potential application of these exciting discoveries to different aspects of Agriculture, the agricultural sector can meet the demands by increasing population.

DigiExt, launched in 2017,  is a Ghananian technology company committed to the sustainable development of African agriculture and aims to challenge the way technologies are provided to smallholder farmers. Its products and services include non-wood agro-waste paper products, crop health and disease surveillance, financial inclusion and commodity markets, and orders for farm input and mechanization.

According to the co-founder and chief technology officer, the company uses user-friendly innovations with local linguistics technology  to solve indigenous problems, thereby reducing the barrier of adoption by the local farmers. The innovative solutions employed include local voice-enabled interface, simplistic frontend procedures, consultation and advanced match-matching algorithms to pair farmers and their prospective clients.

DigiExt services include  digital marketplace for agricultural produce transaction, consultation, etc. DigiExt, also initiates collaboration between industries and farmers based on their requirements, facilitates industries requests, etc.

Osei claimed that DigiExt has managed more than 200,000 farmers and over 2 million acres of land area coverage. Osei said,  “Through our B2B model we manage over 200,000 farmers covering a land area of over two million acres. Our marketplace is rich due to the ecosystem we build, so farm groups pay for access. We also make money in terms of origination and interest fees in these credit facilities given in the form of productivity services and goods. Also, banks and insurance companies that depend on our digital tools for risk mitigation pay us,”

DigiExt CTO hinted at its expansion plans beyond West and East  Africa (where it has an active operational presence) to North and Southern Africa.