Lersha Raised $1M To Digitize Rural Farming Supply Chains

🌽 A Win for Lersha

• Ethiopia’s Lersha unleashes the power of digtial agriculture to boost smallholder farmers productivity.

• Investor check. The International Finance Corporation provided the capital after a three-year review process.

📉 The Lending Gap

• Africa’s agricultural value chains face a $170 billion financing shortage and low productivity.

• Local commercial banks only provide 5% of their loans to the agricultural sector.

• This is a massive problem. Farming currently provides 90% of the country's total output. It is the backbone of the economy.

📱 High-Tech and High-Touch

• They conduct training sessions for farmers and stakeholders, built a network of thousands of human agents to support demand organization on ground.

• They use digital credit scores to give farmers microloans without needing traditional collateral. So calling its model as agrifinace.

• By the end of 2024, they have created 322,000 digital farmer profiles and recruited over 3,200 agents.

🚀 Looking Ahead

• Fresh funds will grow the agent network to help farmers access more financing, with reduced borrowing costs.

• They also work with local banks to arrange more than $25M in input financing in 2026.

• Going up. They are preparing for massive regional expansion to support more growers in the coming years.