Some years back, I set off to build a dairy empire. It failed spectacularly.

My foray into "M-Pesa farming" taught me a brutal lesson, not just about untrustworthy staff, but about the core problem in African agriculture: the productivity gap.

• My cows: 10-15L/day.

• The same breed in Brazil: 60L/day.

This isn't just a farming problem; it’s why agritech has no unicorns. We've seen them in payments (M-Pesa, Paystack), but not in ag. Why?

Because "helping African farmers" is, frankly not a great start-up ideas. You’re running up against too many issues.

The sector is a systemic market failure.

Startups crash against:

• The "Customer": 81.7% of farmers in Nigeria are "low commercialization" (subsistence). They aren't trying to be "scaled."

• The Foundation: No land titles for collateral (95% in rural Nigeria), no irrigation (<6% in SSA).

• The Incentives: Elites profit from food imports, and politicians prefer "procurement" on roads over funding extension services.

The conclusion? The valuable "pockets" are already captured by banks. The rest is a high-risk, low-margin trap, turning agritech into a DFI-funded impact game.

It's a government problem, not a fintech one.