Kungula Africa

Informal open-air food markets are at the core of urban food supply systems in sub-Saharan Africa - accounting for more than 50% of energy and protein intake (FAO). However, these high-value yet inefficient systems of trade continue to exclude many key players from profitably participating in urban food trade and further dragging Africa into food insecurity, hunger, and poverty. Rural farmers are exploited or not fairly compensated for their products and informal food traders find the buying process overly tedious.

At Kungula, we are empowering farmers and informal traders with access to low-cost digital technology that provides trade transparency, food traceability, and efficiency. We are building a USSD mobile technology platform that enables informal traders to order and receive fruits and vegetables from farmers, cutting off exploitative trade agents.

Technology empowers, increases reach and creates opportunity. This is not the case for farmers and informal traders in open-air food markets across Africa. The lack of access to digital tools in these markets has perpetuated an old model of food supply where food is produced, distributed, and sold without farmers or traders having a clear idea when, to whom, and at what price food will be sold or bought.

The lack of access to daily food price data, markets, and information creates a perfect environment for farmers and informal traders to be exploited and not fairly compensated for their produce.

Africa’s population is expected to reach 2 billion by the turn of this century and Our World Data further predicts that more than 68% of the global population will live in urban areas by 2050. We are facing a perfect storm as this will exert further pressure on the current fragmented system of trade.

Furthermore, due to a lack of accurate transactional, food traceability and safety, and key players' data, it makes it nearly impossible for local government councils to implement relevant policy in these markets.

Our solution is a flagship technology product called Kungula Marketplace. In the local dialect, Kungula means ordering in bulk or wholesale.

Kungula is a food wholesaler that leverages USSD mobile phone technology to provide an alternative method of trade with far greater coordination between farmers and traders. We provide informal bulk buyers of fruits and vegetables, access to a consistent supply of fresh, quality, and traceable farmer-sourced products.

On our platform, informal food traders can easily self-register, select their preferred, and checkout without the need for an internet connection. This eliminates our customers’ need to invest in out of the budget technology tools like smartphones. Our customers are already using this technology to make peer-to-peer money transfers through what's called mobile money, therefore we strongly believe that Kungula marketplace is a relevant solution.

On the other hand, farmers are our biggest allies. They are at the core of our sourcing model. Our team will source and purchase fresh produce from small to medium-scale farmers through our on-the-spot and contract buying models. Our goal is to help them focus on doing what they do best; growing food and increasing on-farm productivity to feed our growing cities.

We focus on two core groups, smallholder farmers and informal market traders.

With increased urbanization, farmers are constantly being pushed outside of urban areas - making it difficult for them to easily access urban markets. Due to harsh living conditions, rural farmers are leaving their farms in search of jobs in urban areas. Unfortunately, they find themselves among the urban poor.

90% of our customers (informal traders) are women from urban informal settlements. They are the main traders of fruits and vegetables in informal urban open-air markets. On average they sell about 25 Kg of vegetables each day, giving them enough daily income to provide food for their families.

Farmers and traders wake up as early as 4AM to start their workday.  It is due to the lack of transport from their homes to the market and lack of market access to key buyers; the longer your day, the hope you will sell some produce.  Furthermore, these issues are constantly exploited by market agents.  

Our team has been running an offline proof of concept to engage with our customers and gain insights into their specific challenges. During this time we have learnt that the majority of our target group does not own smartphones. Therefore, our solution is based on USSD mobile technology to enable farmers and traders to efficiently sell and source their products in these fragmented markets.

Kungula will be an off-taker of fruits and vegetables. This way both farmers and traders do not have to travel as far nor waste produce when they are unable to sell.

Our solution focuses on providing low-cost digital tools to farmers and informal traders in open-air food markets who have limited access to reliable internet, lack access to urban markets, and are unbanked. Our mission is to formalise and integrate informal market systems into the digital economy. We are providing a digital space for farmers and informal traders to conduct business transactions that are transparent, reliable, and efficient, so they do not have to rely on exploitative market agents for an income.     

Previously, our team has been conducting a proof of concept to validate mission-critical assumptions in our business model and gain insights into the challenges faced by farmers and informal traders in open-air markets. Our biggest assumption was that farmers and informal traders in open-air markets are looking for alternative, transparent, and efficient methods of trade.

During this six months period, we sold over 8,000 Kg of vegetables (eggplants) to 50 marketeers in two of the biggest open-air markets in Kalulushi and Kitwe, Zambia. This was enough proof for us to move to the next stage of our product development - designing and prototyping of a minimum viable product - a USSD product for informal traders

We strongly believe our solution empowers farmers and traders from marginalized communities with disruptive yet low-cost technology that makes trade simple, transparent, and inclusive.

On top of this, we are creating a solution that digitises trade transactions in these fragmented markets enabling us to achieve three core objectives; 1) simplify trade 2) guarantee food safety, traceability, and quality 3) collect key trade data relevant for policymakers and other partners.

We know how critical traders are to society and for their families. So, by building a stronger and more efficient relationship between traders and farmers, we can still build an inclusive economy with several options instead of having monopolies on the buying ad selling of produce. 

Currently, we have sold over 8,000 Kg of fruits and vegetables to 50 informal traders in two of the biggest open-air markets in Kalulushi and Kitwe, Zambia. 

Our goal is to reach and onboard 100,000 farmers and 5,000 food traders and retailers in open-air markets by year three. 

Below are our specific impact goals and how we will measure them.

#01 Creating digital inclusion by building innovative technology to formalize the trade of agricultural commodities in open-air markets by making transactions simple, transparent, and consistent.

How we measure it: 01) Number of informal traders and food retails ordering through the Kungula marketplace, 02) Number of farmers registered and paid through the Kungula platform 03)Daily transaction data collected through user engagement for decision makers.

#02 Improve the living conditions of farmers and informal traders through increased business opportunity, fair compensation, and transparent and efficient trade.

How we measure it: 01) Record farmers’ weekly sales and traders’ income before and after being on Kungula platform, 02)Record farmers’ and traders’ business growth (their plans on increasing production, expanding customer bases, or employing more people), and 03) Qualitative survey to assess farmers’ and traders’ perception of ease of doing business with and without Kungula

#03 Increase resilience in urban food network and reduce food insecurity

How we measure it: 01) Quantity of food sourced from rural farmers by our customers, 02) Quantity of food bought and costs associated with different foods consumed, and 03) Qualitative survey on eagerness to purchase locally produced food.

Furthermore, we continue to track engagement of our substack newsletter and analysing our audience. We are always asking ourselves, are we delivering relevant content users are interested in? Are we engaging with the right audience or do we need to change the way we communicate?

Four.  One full time, one part time, and two on volunteer contracts.

With a combined experience of over 20 years in entrepreneurship, business development, and impact, we firmly believe we are a young, diverse, and relevant team to build our solution.

Kabwela (Co-founder and CEO) has 5 years of experience in startups.  Kungula is not his first startup.  He is well versed in this space and consulting with small businesses and other startups on best practices. Currently, he is working with USAID Zambia as a business advisor where he is training entrepreneurs and SMEs on how to scale their businesses.   

Bethlehem (Co-founder and Product manager) has worked in Tanzania in the NGO space specifically focused on smallholder farmers, SME development, and agricultural value chains for 3 years. Currently, she is working in the private sector for a global supply chain and logistics company.

Akif (Software Engineer - Volunteer Contract) currently works in government, but also has his own startup in DroneTech focused on agriculture. He has a lot of experience in the private sector through his cooperative education in university. 

Robin (Software Engineer - Volunteer Contract) is a full-stack and hands-on technical expert with extensive experience building web platforms and native apps from ideation to scalable products used by millions; for large corporate, non-profit organizations, and celebrities.

We are a global team with experiences ranging from 3 continents: Africa, Europe, and North America. 

We will also choose to have a predominately African led leadership team because data shows that African startups leadership teams are overwhelmingly non-African.  We embody diversity, equity, and inclusion because we believe Africans deserve to lead projects and companies in Africa.  Opportunities are already limited amongst the African youth, and as African startup, we want to expand and create jobs and roles across the continent for the youth.

Our work does not require anyone to have high levels of education, wealth or high status.  We hire anyone who is just as passionate as us and wants to grow Kungula.  Kungula naturally positions itself to hire farmers, traders, and youth because that is the centre of our work.  

We are young entrepreneurs looking to scale our idea and passion to use digital technology to empower lives. The Solve community provides such a level of opportunity and support through peer-to-peer interactions, mentorship, and partnerships which we are immensely excited about.

Through our participation, we are looking to further concretize our impact model to find equitable and sustainable ways of creating value in the communities we serve.

Solve would an invaluable partner that could help us overcome some of the initial logistical and user engagement barriers that we have been facing in our early stage of development.

We have two volunteer software developers that have helped us get our products to the prototype stage. We are looking to use solve impact-driven capital to hire a tech team and further develop our product.

With Solve's experience implementing impact-driven models across the globe, we strongly believe this is an enormous opportunity for us to refine our product offering and business model. Our goal is to impact millions of lives by using low-cost technology that enables efficient, transparent, and inclusive trade of agricultural commodities across Africa.

Organisations working with smallholder farmers. 

Local government councils.  They usually run informal open-air markets or assist in overseeing them.

Transport and logistics companies.

Farmers and traders are often left out since many do not own smartphones.  Our solution is focused on the most used application, USSD technology.  Instead of focusing on the latest technology, we are focused on what is already there and how we can further improve it. 

Kungula could even go beyond being a B2B platform and become a trusted partner in training traders and farmers on digital literacy skills.  Our target group is digitally excluded due to poverty, so it is a matter of how we can benefit our users beyond being a B2B platform. 

Our strategy is to further develop an Android/iOS version of our platform.  Trends are showing that more young Africans are adopting smartphone technology.  With this, we will have to ensure Kungula is a platform that is easily accessible digitally.  We'll need to train young farmers and traders to which knowledge would spread throughout communities.  From our experience, farmers and traders are always eager to learn, making digital literacy an investment worth taking. 

From our experience in agriculture, women make up a large proportion of farmers and traders responsible for selling and buying produce. However, women do not get to keep the majority of the funds. Much of it is given to their husbands or the male family member. 

Through Kungula, we are making it easier for farmers and traders to increase their incomes and transactions so they can go home with more money.  Mobile money is a great option for women to hold for themselves.  Cash tends to be a bit more difficult. Our platform uses predominately mobile money.  Providing our target group autonomy over their finances.

Though, we want to continue to build a platform to protect our users from exploitative market agents. Women will be able to have more confidence over there buying and selling when it's transparent.  Reducing the instances of market agents exploiting women.  Agents get away with exploiting female farmers and traders because they know they can get away with it.  Here is a huge opportunity to scale a platform like Kungula, making it safer to do these kinds of transactions.