The EvoFarm

Insufficient, affordable technologies with local context for small farmers to increase healthy food production, reduce losses, monitor nutrients, and water levels.

In South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa, rural communities are characterized by low-income population with low level of formal education, low crops and livestock yield, poor water access, vulnerability to floods and drought including agricultural water pollution, whilst also highly dependent on natural resources for their livelihoods.

Water insecurity, exacerbated by climate change, affects the ability of small farmers or home growers to produce food. Making it difficult for them to feed their families and to commercialize, thereby increasing hunger, poverty, and unemployment.

There are over two million smallholder farmers in South Africa and 250 million in Sub-Saharan Africa who are the backbone of agriculture.

In South Africa, agriculture accounts for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions and 62% of freshwater withdrawals therefore, it is crucial to educate small farmers on the importance of water conservation, ways to increase healthy food production through relevant technologies and eco-smart farming practices.

Moreover, 45% of South Africa’s food is lost preharvest and for the entire African continent food loss is at 37%. The contributing factors of preharvest loss include environmental issues, pests and diseases infestation mismanagement of chemical applications, planting or harvesting at the wrong time and education.

Post harvest losses along the value chain in Africa are even higher, estimated between 30 – 50%.

Globally 14% of food, estimated at USD 400 billion is lost at harvest and along the supply chain.

Furthermore, there is a shortage of real-time, reliable, and integrated data for policy makers to understand the magnitude of challenges in Agriculture. As well as limited monitoring and forecasting capacity to enable better data-driven decisions, early mitigation, and reduced response time.

It is for this reason that Fourth Wave Technology has simplified and modified disruptive technologies to make them accessible, cost effective and relevant to the needs of small farmers, policy makers, governments, agrifood and water industries; to enable data-driven decision making and problem solving, greater farm productivity, improved crop yield, crop health, waste reduction, increased farmers income and long-term environmental sustainability.

The Solution

EVOFARM is a multilingual and interactive mobile Application that offers small farmers a comprehensive, practical, and user-friendly eco-smart agricultural advisory. It is also an aggregation and monitoring platform that enables small farmers to increase yield while preserving the environment.

In simple terms, the App is an AI agronomist in farmers pockets, accessible in any language, anywhere and anytime.

The Mobile App is built on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technologies.

1. Built on scalable architecture.
2. Software Mobile Application based Hybrid operating systems (IOS and Android)
3. Open Source
4. Multilingual and audio support catering for different languages and literacy levels. (Voice Recognition, Text to Speech)

What the App does:

• Enables correct application of the right type and amount of fertilizer and soil amendments to maintain the right nutrients levels, minimizing detrimental impacts on the environment thereby, preserving water, reducing water pollution and greenhouse emission by half.
• Through AI Image recognition, it diagnoses and detects crop infestation, stress associated with moisture deficiencies, insects or fungal for early mitigation to reduce crop loss and increases food production. Early detection of diseases also allows targeted interventions, reducing the need for broad-spectrum pesticides.
• Delivers traceable and better-quality products to buyers, increasing trade and farmers profits.
• Enables weather forecasting, climate change and instant warning of critical environmental changes reducing government response time and saving farmers money.
• Monitors crop performance to recommend resilient crop varieties that can withstand droughts, floods, diseases, and extreme temperatures.
• Enables precision farming and farm efficiencies, increasing food production on the same size of land by 50%.
• Enables access to real time agronomic data and insights for better decision making.
• Detects farm anomalies for immediate attention.
• Enables farmers to access their own historic and predictive analysis of the yield data to help raise capital.
• Through EVOCHAT AI farmers can access advisory on animal health behavior and feed efficiency, and early detection of health issues.
• Teaches regenerative farming techniques of treating and restoring the soil, enabling farmers to enhance carbon capture through improved porosity in the soil. Thereby enhancing water absorption during rainfall and irrigation, reducing irrigation water requirements by up to 30% while preventing runoffs and minimizing algae blooms in nearby rivers.

Our solution includes a Cloud based Business Intelligence Platform for governments, policy makers and organizations leaders to access robust, integrated, and real-time data analytics on key predetermined metrics such as climate change, water management, agricultural challenges, impacted communities.

Medium and large food producers have access to data on supply chain, distribution channels, customer behavior, transportation routes and more to identify inefficiencies and suggest improvements. Reducing emissions by optimizing transportation routes for delivering produce to market and reduce food loss.

The EVOFARM Business Intelligence is on LookML providing an abstract layer for SQL Databases for Data Modeling and Data Analytics.

Our solution includes traditional conservation agriculture and regenerative farming techniques for greater biodiversity and reduced effects of climate change.

• Planting drought tolerant crops.
• Soil tilth for effective water infiltration and enable absorption of rainwater.
•  Removal of alien invasive plants.

We are improving the lives of black smallholder farmers, estimated at 250 million in sub-Saharan Africa, who are key to 70% of the food production and livelihoods of many who work in the agricultural sector.

In South Africa there are over 2 million black smallholder farmers however, they constitute between 5 – 10% of the overall commercial production due to constraints to inclusive growth in the agriculture and agribusiness sector, given the legacy of apartheid.

In 25 years since democracy, South Africa’s agricultural sector has not transformed. The sector is still dominated by white farmers who are well resourced and highly supported by the previous government regime.

While the poorly resourced small-scale and subsistence black-owned farms that did not benefit from government support, have to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and confront structural challenges related to infrastructure and weak market linkages.

Small black farmers including women, typically own small plots of land, in some cases, do not have the rights to land ownership, they lack equal access to equipment, technologies, farm inputs, advisory and financial services, making it difficult for their small-scale enterprises to commercialize or add value to agriculture and the South African economy.

Furthermore, the pandemic left the survival of many of these small farmers beyond crises Compounded by the rising inflation caused by Russia-Ukraine conflict and the current extreme weather events.

While digitization has begun in many parts of the African continent, there are still huge gaps, as the approaches and technologies have not been locally specific or designed for emerging farmers, home growers, urban farmers, or smallholder farmers in unserved communities.

Moreover, there is also a high intersectional gap between gender and technology in the agriculture. In Ghana and most parts of Africa, women’s contribution or output to agriculture is estimated to be 70%. This figure keeps escalating.  Despite their great direct involvement in agriculture, women’s yield remains at 20-30% marred by high post-harvest losses.

Therefore, by empowering and increasing small black farmers, inclusive of women’s rights to land, access to relevant cost -effective technologies, advisory, market linkages and financial services, we stand to:

1. Increase food production.
2.  De-risk small farmers so they can be included in supply chains and value chains.
3.  Increase farmers profits.
4. Enable job creation in unserved communities.
5. Increase black farmers' advocacy.
6. Improve women economic empowerment, limiting malnutrition and hunger at household levels.
7. Close digital gaps
8. Lift many households out of poverty, contributing to greater economic, agricultural transformation of South Africa and environmental longevity.

Our team is a true representation of the communities we serve.

Our solution is focused on inclusion of unserved and underserved markets – inclusive of women regardless of economic status or literacy levels.

The Team Lead’s maternal relatives still live in rural communities. It is through engagements and consultations with leaders and farmers in these communities that the Team Lead was inspired to develop the solution.

In 2021 we conducted a Needs Analysis with small farmers from 10 Southern African countries, to understand their challenges and needs. These insights informed the modules, languages and the content of the eco-smart education.

Subsequently, we conducted two pilots in South Africa and Ghana with farmers, cooperative and community leaders; where we received a massive approval from youth groups, women, teachers, professionals, and community leaders.

Prospects of jobs, income, better standard of living, digital tools with local context and skills development were some of the reasons cited for the approval.

Farmers also gave feedback after using the mobile app for 3 months, which we considered when making additional changes to the technology.

Feedback from the 250 farmers who tested the App: https://youtu.be/TISAUIHluWc

In 2023, we launched the solution with 250 farmers in Johannesburg, we iterated the technology based on user feedback.

Starting in April we will be going commercial starting with home growers and emerging commercial farmers in South Africa.

We also have an early adopter B2B customer with a signed offer of intent, to license the two fully functional modules of the mobile App and the Business Intelligence Platform in May 2024.

This is one of our greatest achievements to date, pre-selling the completed modules of the solution.

While access to capital continues to be a challenge for many black founders, including all women founders; an opportunity to participate in this program will help us leverage key partners and early adopter B2B customers within the ecosystem.

Thereby, moving us closer to achieving our Purpose of increasing Africa’s food production, advancing healthy food systems, and improving climate resilience through meaningful innovation.

Technical expertise gained from MIT and other partners will also help us refine our technology further as the shift towards AI-driven insights will usher in a new era of a deeper understanding of complex environmental issues, fostering continuous learning in areas like measuring greenhouse emissions and carbon capture.

Finally, we are passionate, hardworking & hands-on founders with a lot of grit who believe in the pursuit of doing good while generating attractive, financial returns by transforming ideas into actions and actions into Impact.

While digitization has begun in South Africa and many parts of the African continent, there are still huge gaps, as the approaches and technologies have not been locally specific or designed for emerging farmers, home growers, urban farmers, or smallholder farmers in disadvantaged and rural communities.

Fourth Wave Technology has a fresh approach to increase digital adoption in Africa; by harnessing the power of disruptive technologies, ensuring accessibility for all, irrespective of economic and educational backgrounds.

 We have simplified and brought these cutting-edge technologies to a level where everyone can comprehend and benefit from, especially catering to the unique needs of those in unserved and informal markets.

Our technology is multilingual to cater for many languages in the African continent and is accessible on audio format for many who can’t read, they can now listen to the education in their languages.

The education content is also presented in different educational levels, from basic, simple content to advanced content.

Some modules are accessible offline, designed for those with connectivity challenges, given that power and internet connectivity are major challenges in Africa.

Digitization of Farming Activities and Aggregation

Our crop calendar and monitoring enable farmers to capture and track farm activities. No need for spreadsheets or pieces of paper, they tend to lose. Moreover, over time AI learns more about their specific farm and flags some activities they can do more of or less of to ensure increased yield.

We have digitized aggregation where B2B buyers can view nutrients levels of their crops in real time, saving them time and money by sending their agronomists out in the fields to physically monitor farmers activities.

Broader Impact of the Solution

Instead of the current fragmented data and the absence of real time reliable data, government officials will now have access to effective climate change monitoring tools.

Enabling access to accurate status of water, the magnitude of water problems for immediate interventions.

This technology functions as a reporting system for the annual state of agriculture reporting.

Data driven insights will speed up decision making and problem solving, optimizing resources usage, and reducing environmental impact.

Effective monitoring of climate change through instant warning of critical environmental changes, reducing both farmers and government officials’ response time and saving money.

 Improved food security information management system.

Better monitoring and assessment of government community support programs.

Essentially, the time policy makers, agrifood and water sectors used to spend looking for data will now be spent analyzing data, identifying problems before becoming catastrophic, finding solutions, and executing on their plans in real time.

Enabling food companies to procure the best products that are grown the right way in alignment with their sustainability plans of reducing greenhouse emissions.

In the case of the farming communities, this technology means farmers do not have to rely on:

1. Unavailable or unskilled extension workers for information, skills and knowledge transfer.
2. Unaffordable agronomist consultations.
3. Expensive technologies that lack local context and not designed for small black farmers.

Digital Training:

Technical training is offered to increase farmers digital literacy and the ability to navigate the mobile Application to ensure technology adoption and uptake.

We engage and empower youth with digital skills and leadership capabilities so they can transfer these skills to older farmers in their communities to ensure long term sustainability and local support. 

The education and training are disseminated through the mobile App for long term learning and effectiveness.

Capacity Building on Conservation/Regenerative Farming Techniques:

By learning regenerative farming techniques of treating and restoring the soil, farmers can enhance carbon capture through improved porosity in the soil. This enhances water absorption during rainfall and irrigation, reducing irrigation water requirements by up to 30% while preventing runoffs and minimizing algae blooms in nearby rivers.

Enabling farmers to grow drought and disease resistant crops to alleviate hunger especially for communities in water scarce areas.

Empowering farmers leads to behavioral change and raises environmentally and technologically minded farmers.

Nutrition Education

Equipping communities with skills and expertise to grow nutritious and safe food reduces malnutrition at household level.

Market Linkages

Beast Practice certification and equipping farmers with eco-smart and efficient farming methods and agro-processing techniques that comply with food quality standards and customers’ certification requirements gives farmers access to lucrative markets, increasing trade and farmers' profits.

By negotiating off-take agreements on behalf of farmers, we ensure they get fair pricing for their produce.

AI Monitoring

1. AI weather and climate forecasting and instant warning of critical environmental changes reducing governments response time and saving farmers money.
2.  Early detection of crop infestation and stress associated with moisture deficiencies, insects, or fungal infestation allows early mitigation to reduce crop loss and increase food production.
3. Monitoring of droughts and floods by governments, to understand the extent of climate change challenges, communities affected and their location by provinces to ensure prompt support.
4. Historic and predictive analysis of the yield to increase farmers credit worthiness to access funding.
5.  Effective monitoring and evaluation of government and organizations support programs to enable development of evidence-based policies for greater impact.

Data & Insights Analytics and Reports

• Streamlined data collection, analysis, and reporting.
• Real time, reliable data on the status of water and the magnitude of water problems in rural areas and other disadvantaged communities.
• Improved collection and publication of accurate and timely agronomic data for better decision making and problem solving by leaders and policy makers.
• Improved traceability of communities impacted by water scarcity for timely support.
• Access to higher quality of real time data and analytics from farm level, cluster level, regional and national level data for policy makers to detect water anomalies for immediate attention.

Impact Goals

Environmental Impact  

Our goal is to solve water waste and pollution through farmers' behavioral change and eco-smart farming methods through treatment and restoration of the soil, enhance carbon capture through improved porosity in the soil. Enhance water absorption during rainfall and reducing irrigation water requirements.

Through over fertilization, farmers reinforce greenhouse effect by adding excess nitrogen to the soil.

Our goal is to equip farmers and home growers with the knowledge to apply the right type and the right amounts of fertilizers and soil amendments that produce high yields while minimizing detrimental impacts on the environment and reduce greenhouse emission.

South Africans use 235 litres per person daily, per capita consumption, which is above the global average of 173 litres.

Compared per Litres of water saved, The EvoFarm Mobile Application reduces the usual need for 50 kg of Fertilizer-N, per farmer and hector of the farm which reduces GHG emissions by 215 kgCO₂eq. (IdeMat).

Our goal is to save 500 000 000 of Litres of water saved by 2030.

Social Impact  

Through data- driven farming practices, our goal is to increase farm precision, leading to an increase in the production of healthy and nutritious food.

Technological progress will contribute to farmers profitability, job creation, self-employment projects and food secure communities, improving lives of 1,000 000 households.

Sustainable Development Goals

• Zero Hunger – By 2030 we will have increased local food production through small farmers and home growers, enabling them to feed their families, increase income and employment. Indicator – 50% increase in yield on the same size land.
• Reduced Inequality: By 2030 women and youth will be included in the digital and supply chain economy, closing digital gaps, enabling women to participate fully in the sub-Saharan African agricultural economy, ultimately improving equity. Indicator – 30% increase in the number of women and youth with access to technologies, advisory services, funding, and land. 300 000 women (30% of 1mil)
• Responsible consumption and production –awareness of regenerative farming, soil treatment to increase carbon capture reduces water consumption, while less usage or correct application of synthetic fertilizers prevents water contamination by run-off fertilizers to the near-by rivers. Indicator – 500 million liters of water saved.
• Correct application of the right type and amount of fertilizer and soil amendments to maintain the right nutrients levels, minimizing detrimental impacts on the environment thereby, reducing greenhouse emission by half.
• Industry Innovation and Infrastructure

By 2030 1million small farmers, including 100 000 emerging agribusinesses will have access to relevant, simplified technologies that suit their needs, thereby transforming agriculture digitally. Indicator: increased resource-use efficiency and greater adoption of clean and environmentally sound technologies and industrial processes.

Measuring progress

• Progress Reports.
• Stakeholder engagements.
• Sales and distribution reports.
• App usage analytics.
• Data Analytics Reports.
• Training sessions attended by users.

 Outputs:

• The number of farmers trained and certified.
• The number of new customers farmers acquired.
• The number of training sessions per province.
• The number of active users.
• The percentage of women and youth reached.

Our solution is powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Technologies, enabling AI image recognition capability for crop health analysis and chat AI for interactive advisory.

With cutting edge methods of Machine Learning, we train custom deep neutral networks to ensure the best possible analysis results.

Our solution is Cloud based.

Built on scalable architecture.

Software Mobile Application based Hybrid operating systems (IOS and Android)

Open Source

Multilingual and audio support catering for different languages and literacy levels. (Voice Recognition, Text to Speech)

Cloud based Business Intelligence Platform on LookML providing an abstract layer for SQL Databases for Data Modeling and Data Analytics.

Our solution also includes traditional conservation agriculture and regenerative farming techniques to enable greater biodiversity and reduce the effects of climate change.

This includes water conservation methods of planting drought-tolerant crops and drip irrigation.

Since drip irrigation produces a slow drip of water directly onto the plant roots, saving 20%-50% of water, significantly diminishing runoff and surface evaporation.

Other traditional methods we use are soil tilth for effective water infiltration and enable absorption of rainwater.

 Including the removal of alien invasive plants which consume up to 20% more water than indigenous vegetation.

7 People work on the solution.

5 Full-time staff

2 part-time staff

2 years

As a black owned and woman led company, diversity and inclusion is personal to us.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion is our strategic advantage and an ethos ingrained in everything we do; from hiring & recruitment processes, mobility programs, products and services, how we interact with one another, internal and external messaging to how we treat both internal and external customers.

Most importantly, our solution is focused on inclusion of underserved markets – women in particular and people with learning disabilities.

Fourth Wave Tech addresses the high levels of race and gender-based inequality in the Agri-food sector by enabling black women agripreneurs to gain access to critical technologies, climate-smart farming practices and certification to ensure farm productivity, increased yield to make it easier for them to access funding and markets.

Our tech solutions also reflect inclusion; hence the content is multilingual and accessible in audio to include many people with literacy levels and learning disabilities.

(B2B2C2G) Business Model

Customer Segments 

• Emerging Commercial Farmers
• Home Growers
• Agrifood and water organizations
• Government Agencies

Value Proposition

Emerging Commercial Farmers

• Access to affordable, user-friendly AI technologies for precision farming.
• Increased farm productivity and yield
• Reduced preharvest crop losses.
• Increased trade and income.
• Detection of farm anomalies for immediate attention.
• Access historic and predictive analysis of the yield data for fundraising.
• Access to farm inputs at reduced cost.
• Market linkages with negotiated off-take agreements.

Home Growers

• Access to practical and user-friendly advice on how to grow their own safe, fresh, and nutritious food.
• Access to 33 000 plant species, crops, herbs, and animal husbandry advisory.
• Ability to analyse crops’ pests and diseases in 5 seconds with 93% accuray to get symptoms diagnosis, treatment options and preventative measures.
• Access our EVOCHAT to enquire about crops and animal husbandry.
• Capture, Monitor and track your field activities.
• Access eco-smart inputs at discounted prices.

Agrifood & water organizations

• Procure best quality products, grown sustainably to reduce greenhouse emissions.
• Effective monitoring of farmers’ progress, yield, and crop nutrients levels to detect anomalies, minimize rejects and low harvest.
• Ability to analyze supply chains and market digitally, quantify customer value, interpret customer behavior, and evaluate distribution processes and channels for emissions reduction.
• One central dashboard for setting up, reviewing, and updating content and reports.
• Better traceability and great-quality products to consumers.
• Effective monitoring of climate change, droughts, and floods in real time.
• Effective monitoring of water stress levels and affected communities for better problem solving.

Government Agencies

• Strong data coordination, dissemination, and reporting.
• Effective assessment and monitoring of water stress, droughts and climate change for instant warning and reduced response time.
• Access to high-quality, real-time data & insights for better decision making.
• Hunger alleviation.
• Increased long-term environmental sustainability.
• Ability to foster a resilient, digitally transformed agriculture.
• Effective monitoring and evaluation of community support programs.

Customer Relationships

Freemium

Subscriptions & Rewards for regular App usage.

Discounts on upfront annual B2B API licenses.

• Self service
• Assisted
• Co-creation

Channels

• Agricultural forums
• Social media
• Radio
• Conferences & Exhibitions

We deliver value through:

• Mobile Application
• Google Play, I-Store
• Business Intelligence Platform

We communicate:

• In-person
• Online
• Automated responses
• After service tech support

Key Activities

• Market validation
• Software development
• Ensuring clean, reliable data sets
• Pilots
• Digital Training
• Exhibitions
• Sales & Marketing

Key Resources

• Developers
• Content Manager
• Tech Support
• Accountant
• Field Marketers

Key Partners

• FMCG Companies
• Foundations
• Government Agencies
• Farm Input sellers
• Cloud and AI Solutions Providers
• Academic Institutions
• Farmer Forums

Cost Structure

• Software Development
• Salaries
• Pilots
• Customer Acquisition
• Exhibitions

Revenue Streams

• Subscriptions
• API Licensing
• Data & Insights Reports
• Farm Input Transaction fees
• Aggregation Fees

In August 2022 we were awarded $20K CAD grant through the Energia Ventures Accelerator in Canada and an additional $50K CAD SAFE Investment from New Brunswick Innovation Foundation (NBIF)which was awarded to only 3 Founders out of the 5 who made it into Energia. 

January -2023 we were awarded a Social Innovation Award by the South African Breweries Foundation with a $35K USD seed grant.

March 2024 - Made the Top 10 Finalist Cleantech Companies in South Africa and The Best Woman-led Team Award from the Global Innovation Cleantech Program (GCIP) - Won $5 000 USD

Revenue Model (SaaS)

Fourth Wave Tech has 5 ways to monetize the technology:

1.    API Licensing Packages

2.    Growers Subscription Packages (Farmer Basic & Premium Subscriptions)

3. Aggregation Fees from negotiated corporate off-take agreements.

4. E-Commerce – Transactions from the digital eco-system partners (farm   input suppliers)

 5. Data & Insights Reports

While we are still Pre-revenue, our greatest achievement is our ability to presell the two completed modules to our very first early adopter Igugu Cleantech, who has signed a letter of intent to license the API in May 2024, moving the business to revenue generation. This is our longest and largest contract since the company will expand to other parts of Africa, enabling us access to those markets.

We are in partnerships with McCain South Africa, Sibanye Still Water Mining House and discussions are underway with OXFAM SA.

We've also applied for Commercialization funding through the Technology Innovation Agency, which will help us launch our solution in May 2024, targeting emerging commercial farmers and home growers.

We currently have 250 farmers who have been part of the pilot for the past 6 months using the App.

Our goal is to onboard 1000 farmers by December 2024, with a min of 20% conversion into paid subscriptions.

Discussions are underway with potential B2B customers below:

UN Women

UNIDO

Reel Life