iProcure, a prominent data-driven African agricultural input supply company, has announced its expansion into Tanzania in partnership with the Farm to Market Alliance (FtMA), a consortium of public and private institutions focused on increasing the income and resilience of smallholders while boosting commercial viability for all value chain stakeholders. FtMA operates a network of last-mile service providers known as Farmer Service Centers (FSCs), which serve as critical service hubs providing demand-driven services such as quality inputs, weather and planting advisory information, affordable financing, handling and storage solutions, and timely market connections to guide producers’ transition to commercial farming. Through this partnership, iProcure and FtMA will improve access to supplies and services for more than 125,000 farmers in Tanzania.

iProcure has disrupted traditional agricultural supply chains in East Africa by establishing its own distribution infrastructure, connecting major agricultural input suppliers directly to local agro-dealers through its proprietary distribution technology system. By cutting out the middlemen in the traditional agricultural supply chain and providing technology-driven insights on supply levels and prices, iProcure ensures the availability, quality, and delivery of critical agricultural inputs like fertilizers and seeds while delivering savings. This, in turn, enables agro-dealers to provide the farmers that rely on them with the products they require when they need them.

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In addition to procuring and delivering supplies to over one million farmers, iProcure’s software and data management solutions digitize agro-dealers’ businesses and offer invaluable insights into regional agricultural input demand, price sensitivity, and creditworthiness. iProcure has utilized this information to extend Buy-Now-Pay-Later (BNPL) services to more than 1,500 agro-dealers.

FtMA provides a platform to offer last-mile service delivery and structured market access to 125,000 farmers in rural Tanzania through its network of 295 Farmer Service Centers situated across six regions. The services offered include market access, farm inputs, financing, mechanization, advisory services, and insurance. Through this partnership, iProcure will deploy its supply-chain tracking technology and business management software solutions to 100 Tanzanian agro-dealers to enhance their operational efficiency and supply traceability. The partnership aims to deploy iProcure solutions to 100 FtMA Farmer Service Centers by November 2023.

Niraj Varia, iProcure’s CEO, stated that “iProcure has been eyeing Tanzania, and this partnership with FtMA provides an ideal opportunity to introduce our technology to an established network of agro-dealers. FtMA shares our vision of digitizing agriculture, assisting farmers, and improving supply chains, so we are excited to enter this new market alongside them.” Mads Lofvall, Managing Director of FtMA, added that “FtMA is thrilled about the partnership with iProcure in Tanzania. At our core, FtMA aims to bridge the gap between service delivery and market access at the first and last mile. Digitizing the work of our Farmer Service Centers is critical to bridging this gap, and we look forward to seeing how our FSCs and farmers will benefit from this new partnership.”

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert. 
As an award-winning writer and researcher, he is passionate about telling the African startup story, and is one of the continent’s pioneers in this regard