When Alexander Zanders stood on a patch of land in Oyo State in 2015, he planned to build a simple processing plant. But as the naira plunged, importing machinery became impossible. Forced to pivot, Zanders bought 100 acres, started farming himself, and ran a small experiment supplying 15 local maize growers with inputs on credit. The result? Crop yields tripled, farmer revenues doubled, and Zanders extracted the financial signals hidden in the soil. In this feature, OPEYEMI KARREM tells the story of how UfarmX has facilitated over $6.8 million in trade across 10,000+ farmers in Nigeria, Senegal, and Liberia—not by farming or direct lending, but by turning rural farm data into credit ratings for commercial banks and retailers.
In 2015, Alexander Zanders stood on 2,000 acres of land in Oyo State, southwestern Nigeria, recently gifted to him by his grandmother. The land coincided with Zanders’ burgeoning interest in agriculture, and as he began considering how to commercialise it, he noticed streaks of white powder lining the roadsides surrounding the property. It was cassava. Local farmers were harvesting the crop, processing it, and sun-drying it before turning it into garri—a dietary staple across Nigeria. An entrepreneur at heart, Zanders immediately spotted a supply chain he could plug into.
“My initial goal was simply to build a cassava processing plant because I figured that the local population would feed the plant, and I’d be able to make money from there,” Zanders told TechCabal in an interview in August.
Originally published by TechCabal.