Kenya consistently imports more than USD 1.1 billion worth of food each yearIn the year 2022 alone, Kenya experienced a rise in food imports, jumping from 13.4% to 15.5%. This heavy reliance on imported food, coupled with climate-change-related issues, poses significant obstacles to Kenya's food security and economic and agricultural development.

In response, Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT and the CGIAR Accelerate for Impact Platform (A4IP) have partnered to launch the AgriTech4Kenya Innovation Challenge. The challenge aims to transform Kenya’s agrifood systems by supporting the development, deployment, and adoption of effective, high-impact science-based agritech solutions that are context-specific, beneficiary-centered, and market-ready to unlock Kenya's potential in line with Vision 2030 and the Bottoms Up Economic Transformation Agenda (BETA). 

Briter Bridges has partnered CIAT and CGIAR A4IP to share data and intelligence from its AgBase programme as well as to host the agritech solutions emerging from the challenge on the (soon to be released) platform. 

As part of this partnership, Briter presented The transformative impact of research and innovations in Kenya Agtech at the AgriTech4Kenya Consultation Workshop and Launch event in Nairobi Kenya in April. This event brought together public, private and research organisations to develop applicable solutions to enable and scale human-centric agritech solutions. Currently, the Kenyan agritech ecosystem faces multifaceted challenges that need to be tackled through collaboration from stakeholders in policy space, research support, innovators, investors, farmers, and agri experts. 

The key themes that appeared repeatedly were the need for patient capital that allows for the iteration of solutions, mentorship to scale innovations into viable businesses, and human-centric solution development tailored and usable by end users.

The keynote presentation drew on over 10 years of data on the agri-food tech ecosystem in Kenya from the AgBase platform. It highlighted 5 key insights:

Kenya is home to the biggest Agtech ecosystem in Africa. It accounted for more than 50% of funding into Agtech ecosystems in Africa since 2014. Farm management services, agricultural marketplace and agricultural bioenergy and biomaterials have attracted the majority of funding.

​Increasingly, governments, corporates, research organisations and funders are looking towards these innovations as part of their efforts to drive the adoption of more sustainable agricultural practices and how they can support agtech ecosystems to drive more innovative solutions. For example, improving the data around these agtech ecosystems, facilitating public-private partnerships (PPPs) and improving coordination across stakeholders.

​This approach is already picking up speed for addressing concerns around soil fertility and soil health. But more is needed to help connect and accelerate the ecosystem towards better practices and policies.

In an effort to accelerate the data and startup ecosystem in Kenya to improve soil fertility and soil health in Kenya, the World Bank, Kenya Agricultural and Livestock Research Organization (KALRO), Thryve Innovation CoLab and Briter Bridges hosted an event "Getting Soil Up to Speed” on the back of the AU Africa Fertiliser and Soil Health Summit.

Drawing on data and intelligence from the recently launched Agbase initiative with Mercy Corps Agrifin, Briter presented on 5 key observations from the past decade on soil health and fertility innovation in Kenya. They included:

East Africa received more than half of the total agtech funding raised in Africa between 2015-2024. The region received more than half of the total agtech funding raised in Africa. Explore the infographic for more insights on top-funded companies and the share of funding per country.

Who are the startups contributing to agtech innovation in southern Africa? What products are they offering and where are they based? This infographic provides a quick snapshot of agtech activities within the region.

A quick overview of products offered by agtechs being categorised across 4 main value chains namely; on-arm, post-farm, retail and consumer.