Remilekun Osasona
Seekewa is an all-in-one crowdfunding platform that provides direct support to smallholder farmers. The innovative digital community platform allows people and organizations to support small farming projects.
This unique farm-to-table model which combines refundable e-vouchers and crowdfunding to improve the lives of small farmers in rural Africa was developed in 2016 by Serge and Fred Zamblé who are brothers from Côte dIvoire, Abidjan, as a result of their passion for technology and social innovation. This is in a quest to eradicate the exploding poverty among small farmers in Côte d’Ivoire.
The brothers who are also co-founders of Seekewa, always dreamed of starting a social enterprise in Côte d’Ivoire. With backgrounds in finance and software engineering, they started out running a digital agency before an opportunity from a friend working at a VC firm in France led them to launch Seekewa.
Seekewa digital community platform allows consumers to provide farmers with interest-free microloans. In return, they receive priority access and special discounts on the food produced.
The platform is inspired by crowdfunding and an interest in healthy food and agriculture. The team facilitates and oversees the process to make sure everybody wins. Farmers’ incomes are improved and consumers get healthy, fresh food straight from source at competitive prices.
The Seekewa team has big goals for the future. One day, they hope to be the largest marketplace for fresh foods in the world with consumers purchasing directly from farmers, providing the most enjoyable and impactful farm-to-table experience for the next-gen food systems. Their vision is one where everyone will know the origins of their food, all farmers will receive a fair income and no middle men will take a cut of the profit.
In the short term, Seekewa would like to develop a private, customized version of their platform for us and other companies. This will allow employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders to join their efforts to improve the living conditions and resilience of the beneficiaries in a sustainable way and work together to create a better future.
