Building Together: The Case for Open-Source in African Agriculture

The African agricultural technology (ag-tech) sector has seen both promise and disappointment. While many startups have shown initial traction, few have achieved sustainable scale. This isn’t necessarily due to flawed products but rather a structural issue – the tendency to build everything from scratch instead of leveraging shared infrastructure.

The Pattern of Failure

Centralized technology platforms that rely on continuous external funding often collapse when that funding dries up. The iProcure story is particularly instructive: despite digitizing over a million farmers across Kenya and Uganda, the company’s administration in 2024 required an 18-month salvage operation just to keep the technology alive.

This pattern has been seen before with companies like Fieldy, which built extensive crop prediction models using satellite imagery but ultimately ran out of cash before its regulatory tailwinds arrived. The underlying need these technologies address remains real – African farmers and agribusinesses increasingly require digital solutions for traceability, efficiency, and market access.

A Third Answer: Open-Source Foundations

AgriOS, an open-source ERP system developed by the Dutch-Kenyan firm Advance Insight (now under Linux Foundation governance), represents a different approach. The model is straightforward: build a generic foundation centrally and allow local service providers to customize it for specific market needs.

This addresses several key challenges:

• Single point of failure risk: Distributing ownership prevents any single company from controlling the entire ecosystem\n* Vendor dependency: Local actors retain control over their customizations and data\n* Duplication of effort: A shared foundation reduces redundant development across different companies

AgriOS covers essential operational needs for agri-SMEs, including farmer management, inventory tracking, logistics, and financial tools. Local firms can then build on this foundation to create specialized solutions while retaining full ownership of their innovations.

Real-World Proof Points

Companies like Akeyo Africa (Uganda) are demonstrating the viability of this model. By building on AgriOS instead of starting from scratch, Akeyo launched Auxo Connect – an agricultural intelligence platform that quickly secured over 100 paying B2B customers.

As Miriam Apell, CEO of Akeyo Uganda notes, “We got to market faster and cheaper thanks to AgriOS. It allowed us to focus on creating unique value rather than reinventing the core infrastructure.”

This approach aligns with broader trends in enterprise software where collaborative platforms are becoming more valuable than proprietary code – particularly as AI-assisted development tools enable rapid customization.