Get Guardian on GoogleBaagrilink, an agritech venture founded by Maryland grocer Bashir Azeez, has built three connected tools for African farmers. It is now testing them ahead of launch.
Most conversations about African agriculture start with the farm. Baagrilink started with a grocery store. Bashir Azeez, who runs Abartfoods in Beltsville and Wheaton, Maryland, is building the agritech venture to address four problems he says he has seen first-hand: access to finance, access to markets, post-harvest loss and the lack of any central view of prices.
The venture is in its planning and prototype stage, and Azeez is building relationships with farmers. The platform is in testing and scheduled for launch. What exists today is a set of three tools, each aimed at a different moment in a farmer’s year.
Tool one: a listing system that skips the middle
The first tool is a classified-ads listing system. Farmers list what they have to sell, and customers can connect with them directly.
The idea responds to the market-access problem. A farmer who can only sell to whoever arrives at the farm gate has little say over the price. A listing that buyers can see widens the field. It also begins to build something Azeez says is missing: a visible record of what produce is available and where.
Tool two: a record from planting to sale
The second tool is a farm and livestock management system. It lets farmers monitor their work from planting to sale.
Record-keeping sounds unglamorous, but it carries weight. A farmer who can show what was planted, when, and what it produced has something to show a buyer or, in principle, a lender. That is the logic behind the tool, and it remains to be tested in the field.
The emphasis on tracking also echoes a principle Azeez repeats. Reflecting on a clothing import business in Nigeria that closed within about a year after the naira devalued, he says: “First lesson is to put structure in place regardless of what you do, there will be theft where there is no structure.” His second lesson is to bring technology in early.
Tool three: a soil kit with an AI agronomist
The third tool is the most tangible. Baagrilink has built a soil test kit that measures eight parameters, including soil salinity, pH, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. An AI agronomist is integrated to interpret the results and make recommendations.
Knowing what a soil lacks is the starting point for deciding what to add, and a reading is only useful if the farmer can act on it. The AI agronomist is meant to bridge that gap, turning a set of numbers into advice. How well it does so, and how farmers respond, is what testing is meant to show.
Why the three fit together
Taken together, the tools cover a loop. Soil data informs what to plant. The management system records what happens next. The listing system connects the harvest to buyers. Over time, the platform could also produce data on prices and supply that farmers, buyers and lenders cannot easily see now.
The data point matters because the field is short of it. Estimates of post-harvest loss in sub-Saharan Africa vary widely. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) suggested in 2011 that as much as 37 percent of food produced in the region is lost between production and consumption, while later World Bank research using household surveys found on-farm maize losses of 1.4 to 5.9 percent of national harvests in the countries studied. When credible figures differ that much, better records are not a luxury.
What is not yet known
The prototype is early, and the gaps are plain. Baagrilink has not yet published how many farmers will use the platform, what it will cost them, or what difference it makes to their incomes and losses. Those are the measures investors and partners will look for. Azeez says his next milestone is bringing in investors.
The approach also depends on trust. Farmers will need to believe the soil kit’s results, the listings’ reach and the advice they receive. That kind of trust is built through repeated use, and it cannot be assumed.
A founder who starts at the till
Azeez came to agriculture through trade. He grew up in Ebute-Metta, Lagos, completed a four-year trading apprenticeship at Idumota, and moved to the United States in 2013. In October 2017 he took over a struggling Maryland grocery and now operates it in two locations and online. That demand-side experience, he suggests, gives Baagrilink a view of the market that a farm-first venture might lack.
Whether that view turns into a working platform is the question the next stage will answer.
Sources: World Bank, Is Post-Harvest Loss Significant in Sub-Saharan Africa? (worldbank.org). All product details and biographical facts are from Bashir Azeez.
