[HN Gopher] African Agritech
___________________________________________________________________
African Agritech
Author : niccolop
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-03-16 12:16 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.niamaelbassunie.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.niamaelbassunie.com)
| network2592 wrote:
| It looks a bit like a vague meandering piece trying to drum up
| interest for their investment syndicate. The user that submitted
| this piece seems to be leading a syndicate based on Africa with
| the author [0].
|
| Investment in Africa would be better served by listening more to
| underprivileged Africans that have not had access to the same
| opportunities and capital. Microfinance to support this
| demographic would be more effective and impactful than investing
| in an angel syndicate supported by these sort of blog posts.
|
| [0] https://angel.co/arborem/syndicate
| sremani wrote:
| NPKs (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) are already on the
| verge of setting records. African or otherwise, focusing on NPKs
| and local procurement or alternatives is going to the most
| important thing around the world this year.
|
| North Africa is already on the verge of food security collapse.
| Rest of Africa is not further from it.
|
| $150 barrel oil imposing massive input costs is going to take
| global south straight to Famine.
| universa1 wrote:
| mhm... interesting to read that the practice actually mirrors
| research with the lack of infrastructure etc..., but the need for
| investment in agriculture in Africa is not particularly new, even
| though the angle through startups/venture capital is different.
|
| Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP)
| [1] was and is "active" in most African countries in the past 15+
| years :-)
|
| [1] https://www.nepad.org/caadp
| roughly wrote:
| It strikes me how many of the challenges mentioned in the post
| are straight up just old school infrastructure problems - like
| irrigation, and roads. There've been attempts in various parts of
| Africa to use tech to circumvent a lack of proper infrastructure
| (the entire cell-phone-payments system that I'm sure everyone's
| heard of, and wide spread use of cell phones generally without
| landlines), but I'm always curious if this is Better or if it's
| just Cheaper. There's also a reasonably credible perception of
| the valley and VC broadly as being too focused on shiny tech and
| not enough on actual institutions and capacity-building, and I'm
| curious if that's echoed in the African startup/tech scene as
| well, or if maybe a healthier or more holistic approach is more
| common in that community.
| jeffreyrogers wrote:
| The important aspects of agriculture were mechanized/automated
| decades ago. There's a lot of room for growth in Africa[1] just
| by taking tech that's old but works and using it there. If it
| has to be marketed as SV style entrepreneurship that's fine,
| but I doubt any of the tech layered on top will be a real
| driver of productivity.
|
| [1]: The caveat is that heavy mechanization is capital
| intensive and since labor costs are lower in Africa the optimal
| mix of mechanization will be different than in the US. It also
| leads to centralization and larger farms which is sometimes
| undesirable for political/cultural reasons.
| traceroute66 wrote:
| > I'm always curious if this is Better or if it's just Cheaper
|
| In terms of cell phones, neither.
|
| I know people who tried to push on with various cross-border
| activities virtually during COVID, some of which involved quite
| a lot of people spread out across Africa.
|
| TL;DR it didn't work out that well.
|
| African colleagues kept on dropping out of remote sessions
| because of various issues with local infrastructure (e.g.
| unpredictable local power supply killing cell masts).
|
| But also there was a lot of feedback that Western style cell
| contracts with generous data allowances are either non-existent
| or atrociously expensive. So a lot of people just plain
| couldn't be online for long sessions and had to drop-in here
| and there.
| whimsicalism wrote:
| > not enough on actual institutions and capacity-building
|
| We have the east coast to think about all that silly stuff
| [deleted]
| spicymaki wrote:
| Very interesting, thanks for posting. As a global community we
| need to improve the efficiency of land and water use, which is
| going to be critical for human survival. As well as preserving
| biodiversity. Many countries in Africa has plenty of potential,
| but limited resources we should all take note.
| zehnfischer wrote:
| Supporting African founders in Agriculture, it always strikes me
| how high the potential for improvement is. Demand is mostly
| higher than supply, harvest happens twice a year and yet when you
| start out as a founder you need to not just build one company,
| but solve a whole bunch of problems while you do it. You need to
| solve the logistics problem, create an agent network, find a dev
| agency that doesn't ripp you off - since it is very hard to build
| an in house tech team - and so on and on. Yet from an innovation
| stand-point it is very interesting field. Since your customers -
| i.e. small hold farmers - face extreme economic pressure every
| day, you basically have to create value on day 1. No one got time
| for long term investments.
|
| If only there would be more and somewhat orchestrated innovation
| happen, I think many issues could be fixed.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-03-18 23:01 UTC)