Hot startup of the month: Ghana's Complete Farmer

Driven by rapid advances in AI, Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled precision agriculture as well as innovative agri-fintech solutions, Africa's agritech sector has undergone a remarkable transformation in recent years.

Today, it is increasingly shaped by agri-marketplaces, fintech-powered value chains, and midstream technologies, including food processing, cold-chain logistics and export-focused infrastructure.

Investors are showing growing interest in businesses that deliver tangible outcomes beyond digital advisory services, particularly those that can increase productivity, improve farmer incomes and strengthen trade flows, while demonstrating clear revenue streams, a credible path to profitability and measurable impact for smallholder farmers.

Despite this progress, significant structural challenges persist. Many smallholder farmers continue to face limited access to credit due to the absence of collateral and formal credit histories, while also contending with climate-related shocks, pest outbreaks and fragmented markets characterized by volatile pricing.

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Agritech companies must also navigate uneven rural connectivity, affordability barriers, low levels of digital literacy and the challenge of building trust among farmers who are often cautious adopters of new technologies and highly sensitive to price fluctuations.

As the African agritech ecosystem continues to evolve, platforms that combine financing, agricultural inputs, data-driven intelligence and reliable market access within a commercially sustainable model are emerging as critical enablers of growth.

Their ability to address multiple pain points across the agricultural value chain positions them to drive productivity, resilience and market participation at scale.

One company that shows this integrated approach is Ghana's Complete Farmer. Founded in 2017 by mechanical engineer Desmond Koney, the Accra-based agritech firm has developed a digital platform that connects smallholder and commercial farmers with both domestic and international buyers.

Connecting Africa Associate Editor Matshepo Sehloho spoke to Koney, to gain more insights into the company's work.

Matshepo Sehloho (MS): What inspired the founding of Complete Farmer, and what problem were you trying to solve in Ghana's agricultural sector?

Desmond Koney (DK): Complete Farmer was born from my own experience as a farmer. After my father passed away, I inherited my family's pineapple farm outside Accra and saw first-hand how difficult farming could be when buyers were unreliable, access to finance and inputs was limited, and farmers often lacked the information they needed to know what the market wanted.

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What struck me was that the problem was not a lack of demand. International buyers were actively looking for high-quality African agricultural products, but the systems connecting them with farmers were fragmented and inefficient. Farmers could produce excellent crops but struggled to reach reliable markets, while buyers struggled to source the volumes, consistency and quality they required.

That experience led me to ask a simple question: what if farmers could know what buyers needed before they planted, access the inputs and financing required to produce it, and then connect directly into local and international markets? Complete Farmer was built to create that infrastructure and make agricultural trade work better for both farmers and buyers.

Complete Farmer connects farmers to dependable buyers, while giving global buyers greater confidence in African agricultural sourcing. (Source: Complete Farmer)

MS: How has the company's vision evolved since its launch?

DK: Complete Farmer has evolved from being primarily a marketplace connecting farmers and buyers into a broader agricultural infrastructure platform.

Through operating directly within agricultural value chains, we learned that successful farming requires more than market access – farmers need support throughout the production journey, while buyers need reliability, transparency and consistency.

That insight has shaped our evolution into a platform designed to serve both sides of the agricultural ecosystem.

MS: What gap in the market did you identify that others were overlooking?

DK: A lot of attention was being paid to helping farmers produce more, but production is only one part of the equation.

We saw a major gap around what happens after production, connecting farmers to dependable buyers, while giving global buyers greater confidence in African agricultural sourcing.

MS: Complete Farmer describes itself as an agritech company. How do technology and data drive your business model?

DK: Leveraging technology and data help us give farmers better visibility and control over their farms. We use AI and other technologies to process swathes of data gathered from farms, offering actionable insights to farmers that allow them to make more informed decisions based on factors such as weather and soil conditions.

Through our "CF Grower" platform, we combine precision farming tools, trusted inputs and expert support to help farmers improve yields while adopting more efficient and sustainable practices, with 64% of participating farmers using climate-smart practices and 92% reporting higher yields.

MS: What makes Complete Farmer's approach different from other agricultural platforms operating in Africa?

Many agritech companies are focused primarily on helping farmers improve yields, and, while that is an important part of what we do, producing more only creates value if farmers have a reliable market for what they grow.

Through CF Buyer, we connect farmers with buyers while providing the expert support needed to ensure their products meet international standards and specific buyer requirements, creating a more complete pathway from production to market.

MS: How do you balance innovation with the practical realities faced by smallholder farmers?

DK: Technology only creates value if farmers can use it and see a tangible benefit from it. That means designing around farmers' existing realities rather than expecting farmers to completely change how they operate, while combining digital tools with human support and strong local relationships.

This approach has been crucial to helping us scale at pace: we now serve more than 72,000 registered growers, representing more than 306,000 farm acres.

MS: What impact has Complete Farmer had on farmers, buyers and the broader agricultural value chain?

DK: For farmers, our goal is to create more predictable access to markets and better commercial opportunities.

For buyers, we provide a more reliable way to source agricultural commodities, while at the broader value-chain level we are helping create greater transparency, coordination and efficiency between production and demand.

Our two platforms, CF Grower and CF Buyer, are designed to serve both sides of the market and connect them seamlessly.

MS: What have been the key milestones in Complete Farmer's growth journey?

DK: The biggest milestone has been moving from proving the model to building the infrastructure required to operate at a meaningful scale. Complete Farmer has evolved beyond simply connecting farmers with markets to create the physical systems that make those connections possible in practice.

We now operate eight fulfilment centers across Ghana, supporting the aggregation, grading and movement of produce from farms to buyers across both local and international markets, with an annual production volume of 40,000 metric tons (MT).

Building this infrastructure has been a critical step in creating a more reliable, efficient supply chain for farmers and buyers alike, while giving us the capacity to deepen our impact as the business grows.

MS: What has been the biggest challenge you've faced in scaling the business, and how did you overcome it?

DK: The inherent complexity of agricultural supply chains has been one of our biggest challenges.

Agricultural procurement in Africa has traditionally relied on fragmented and often opaque networks of middlemen, so bringing farmers, aggregators, logistics providers and buyers into a more transparent and coordinated system has been a difficult technological challenge.

But it has also been incredibly rewarding, because solving that fragmentation creates value across the entire chain.

MS: What misconceptions do investors or stakeholders often have about agritech in Africa?

DK: One common misconception is that agritech is primarily about increasing agricultural production and yields.

Of course, helping farmers produce more efficiently is important, but there is little value in producing more if farmers do not have reliable markets to sell those products into. That is why CF Buyer is so important to our model: it connects farmers to buyers and helps ensure what they produce meets the standards and specifications those markets demand.