In 2015, a twenty-seven-year-old Lesego Holzapfel moved home to South Africa from the UK to build a sustainable business that invested in agriculture's most marginalized voices. A year later, a young Nigerian had an idea to use technology to connect farmers with potential investors and markets. Today, Lesego's company, Bokamoso Impact Investments, empowers South Africa's invisible rural population to share knowledge and skills via a diverse entrepreneurial platform. Meanwhile, FarmCrowdy has connected more than 25,000 small-scale farmers with over 4,000 unique sponsors via its online platform and in the last two years have raised investments of over US$2 million to support its scaling efforts.
What do Lesego and FarmCrowdy's Onyeka Akumah have in common? They are both parts of a growing, young, tech-savvy generation in Africa in great need of jobs. And they both demonstrate how ambitious entrepreneurs can help to build globally significant African food markets that meet the mounting demand for nutritious food and better jobs while driving economic growth.
Read more: Venture Africa
Sahel holds Scholars' Conferences in four Universities