Promoting agri-tech

What is an Aurora award?

The Aurora tech award is an annual prize for women founders of IT start-ups whose projects have had the most profound impact on world development. It largely supports women entrepreneurs in the field of advanced technologies. The awards are founded on research that shows that investors are hesitant to invest in businesses founded by women. Talented women are often told that a career in technology is not for them.

Women entrepreneurs are currently creating solutions targeting different sectors such as agriculture, health, and education, among others.

How did you get shortlisted for the award?

We applied for this year’s challenge towards the end of 2022 and we were grouped under the Agri-tech innovations category, which requires information on main achievements, start-up success, and impact, among others.

How have the awards shaped your career in tech?

First, the awards enhanced my confidence in what we are building and the fact that we were shortlisted among the finalists, stirred up our charisma but most importantly enriched the value in providing data services and ICT services for the underserved segment of society.

 How would you summarise the awards?

The recognition for women in tech and generally women entrepreneurs has always been wanting, and having an organisation that invests effort makes a huge difference from what has been the norm world over. This should be motivation for every woman who has a dream, to close their ears and focus.

Some of the challenges I faced were the timing of the last activities, the last call and the final ceremony coming at a time when I had travelled and since it was entirely online, catching up with their schedules proved tricky. Other than that, it was a great experience.

Tell us about your innovation

AXiom Zorn is a data firm with a database of more than 450,000 farmer profiles (data) and still growing. These profiles have more than 320 data points. We developed a Digital Agricultural Reference Bureau (DARB), an ICT-enabled platform that is a one-stop centre for agricultural data, digital extension services, advisory, market linkages, and insurance and digital financial inclusion services. This is built to bring together isolated production activities of smallholder farmers and businesses (agro SMEs). We have gone further to link small and micro-enterprises to the same services leveraging data.

How has it impacted farmers?

We have had more than 40,000 farmers and SMEs linked to financial services, connected more than 2,000 business entities to markets and developed and rolled out an insurance package (AZ bundle) that can be accessed digitally.

What challenges do you face and how do you resolve them?

Data services is a whole new service that has taken a bit of time for people to appreciate. While it unlocks so many opportunities, business as usual is so deeply rooted in our communities that become nearly impossible to implement.

The worst aspect of our society currently is that we have conventional systems where accountability is done for formality. We have had to find tangible deliverables to our data services and indeed we are breaking different barriers and opening a whole new era of process flows.

The other challenges are mainly physical and technical, hence have tangible solutions such as building a network of agents among the grass root communities for the last-mile actualisation of the data services. This has been the most hectic, yet the most satisfying when we create employment opportunities for the youth who would have been idle and rather a problem in society.

Currently, 3,000 youth are part of our network and provide routine data collection services and last-mile delivery to many of our products.

What are some of the things you have achieved in this business?

Contributing to the “leaving no one behind” notion through the digitalisation of the less visible community (men in the rural setting, women and the youth) and linking them to the desired services for livelihood transformation.   

Also providing opportunities to the youth in the digital space across the country.

What virtues helped you manage the last six months?

Enforcing authenticity and accuracy of very sensitive products. We follow the data management principles to the dot, including security, data protection, quality, reliability and ensuring the benefit is realised by the data subject.

The other factor to the success is that we ensure excellent customer support since all our development is internal. That also includes flexibility, transparency, customisation and we have demonstrated scalability in our services and we are not relenting but rather widening our territories beyond political borders.

To other women...

Every woman with a dream can pursue it. Challenge yourself, continuously learn, and surround yourself with the best support structure that looks beyond gender. It is possible to balance personal and professional life.

PHOTO/ courtesy