Agritech Start-up, WeFarm Shop Closes Down

Agritech company, WeFarm, is closing down one of its services, WeFarm shop, barely a year after setting it up. WeFarm shop is an app that was developed by the company to help farmers acquire agricultural products online as well as share reviews and advice among each other.

In a statement to CIO Africa, WeFarm’s Director of Growth, Sofie Mala confirmed that WeFarm shop has been forced to close down after current market conditions had made it difficult for the business to scale.

“We have taken the difficult decision to discontinue one of our services: WeFarm shop,” Sofie wrote, “While our shop has seen incredible demand and growth over the past 9 months, current market conditions make this avenue a difficult one of set up and to scale. On behalf of the whole WeFarm team, we feel incredibly fortunate to have had a partnership with brilliant agrovets, and that we have been able to service thousands of farmers across counties in Kenya with our Shop offerings.”

“We remain devoted to our mission and hope to revisit this path in the future,” she added.

WeFarm was founded in 2014 by Kenny Ewan as a mission-driven tech start-up building platform for the billions of small-scale farmers globally. The company started out in East Africa and claims to have connected over 2.5 million farmers in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

The now shut down, WeFarm Shop, was actually the top income generating venture for the company as it had farmers using the app to purchase their agricultural products. The WeFarm platform has been helping farmers to share reviews and get advices on different farming practices for free.

The company had banked on farmers using the platform to purchase the farming products they may require. The agritech company provided these farmers with a tech platform that would make it easier for the farmers to access the best products at competitive prices and be able to compare different brands of products before they could make decisions on what to purchase.

Even though WeFarm shop has closed down its operations, the WeFarm platform is still available for farmers who want to be in the loop of the trends that are existent in the local and global agricultural sector. The WeFarm app is also available on playstore just without the option to purchase products via the platform.

WeFarm shop closes shortly after another East African start-up, Kune Food, closed down its operations. There has been a rise on the number of start-ups in Africa which have been raising funds for growth but a number of them have been forced to close shop.

Is there anything ailing tech start-ups in the continent?