10 South African Entrepreneurs Innovating In Agriculture
10 South African Entrepreneurs Innovating In Agriculture. South Africa is home to several entrepreneurs that are innovating in the field of agriculture. These South African entrepreneurs are leveraging technology and innovation to address challenges and drive positive change in agriculture. With their innovations, these entrepreneurs seek to make sure that the South African agriculture industry has the latest solutions so that they can provide effective products to the industry. Below are some South African entrepreneurs who are innovating the Agriculture industry.
Benji Meltzer
Benji Meltzer is the co-founder and CTO of Aerobotics. Aerobotics is focused on developing Artificial Intelligence systems for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). The company provides smart, intelligent applications in both the flight-autonomy systems and the automated analyses of data gathered during missions. Aerobotics’ core focus is in the agriculture industry, specifically focussed on perennial crops.
Ntuthuko Shezi
Ntuthuko Shezi is the CEO and founder of Livestock Wealth. Livestock Wealth introduced South Africa to crowdfarming back in 2015 and since then it has been refining its product offering, streamlining processes and helping ita investors grow their wealth the African way. The platform has helped its clients to invest in tangible, growing assets at the click of a button. Innovation is at the heart of what the company does and it aims to expand its product range and to become the foremost crowdfarming platform in the world.
Zamokuhle Thwala
Zamokuhle Thwala is the co-founder of AgriKool. AgriKool is building an e-marketplace that connects producers and buyers to a fair and reliable market. The mission of AgriKool is to transform Africa’s agri-food systems and build resilient agri-food systems.
Leeko Mokoena
Leeko Mokoena is the founder of Made with Rural. This is a platform for small-scale rural & township farmers to be better farmers, who can be included in the country’s mainstream economy. This platform also afford markets to find a single platform engage in professional, long-term business contracts, with small-scale / emerging farmers who have been by-passed by the system.
Nomonde Ncongwane
Mvila Meat is a Buy Township, Buy Village meat supplier based in Emalahleni, Mpumalanga, established in 2015 by Nomonde Ncongwane who was inspired by her grandparents who were passionate farmers back in her home country Swaziland. The company’s main mission is to fulfill its clients` needs. The company oversees every step of the production chain, from the slaughter to the delivery of the product. Over the years it has earned the reputation of being a stable and reliable partner.
Karidas Tshintsholo
Karidas is a young entrepreneur and founder of KHULA from South Africa with vast experience in building startups from ideas to fully fledged businesses. He is passionate about finding inclusive & sustainable solutions for emerging markets. KHULA recently closed a $2M Seed round, and has been awarded as the #1 Business App is South Africa and, #1 Agricultural solution in South Africa, and top 10 social enterprises in the world by the Chivas Venture initiative.
Simon Hazell
Simon Hazell is a South African entrepreneur, co-founder and Chief Executive of Inseco. He launched Inseco in South Africa in 2018, with one purpose: to help livestock, petfood and crop production industries around the world reduce their reliance on unsustainable ingredients.
Maximilian Pichulik
Max is an impact investing professional, with over 17 years experience in driving access to capital for scalable, impact ventures on the African continent. Maximilian is the co-founder of GreenFingers Mobile, a technology venture, which digitally manages and finances smallholder farmers in Africa. GreenFingers Mobile replaces paper and pen small farmer management systems enabling transparency in the value chain and creating digital identities and credit records for farmers.
Jacobus Els
Jacobus Els is the co-founder of Revolute Systems, the company provides a wide range of precision agriculture measurement tools and management software. Whether you are in farming or consulting, it provides an operation with the latest remote sensing capabilities. Its tech is able to quantify variations in soil, canopy health and fruit load to help farmers optimize inputs and ultimately harvest better yields.
Kevin Cuthbert
Kevin Cuthbert is the co-founder of Skudu, an Agri-tech startup based in Paarl, South Africa that has developed a proprietary algorithm that produces Soil and Foliar guidelines from laboratory analysis. As original architect of the logic of the algorithm Cuthbert currently oversees the back-end and front-end development teams as well as the financial function.
