Head of Operations - Industrial Engineer

Nile.ag, a South African agricultural technology platform, has secured R200 million (US$10.6 million) in funding to expand its services across Southern Africa.

Nile.ag, a South African agri-tech platform, raised $10.6 million to expand in Southern Africa. The funding was led by Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund, with FMO and Platform Investment Partners also participating. Nile, founded in 2021, has traded over 225,000 tons of produce and plans to double this. The funds will scale operations, grow its agricultural inputs marketplace, and introduce new financing solutions. Nile aims to enhance farmer livelihoods through digital trade and financial access.

Across many developing markets, farmers of all types struggle to find fair pricing and straightforward trading practices, as middlemen along the supply chain tend to complicate dealings and add costs.South Africa-based Nile operates a marketplace aimed at simplifying this process by digitizing interactions and, through its online marketplace, facilitating more direct relationships between farmers, suppliers, and buyers.This enables farmers to negotiate fairer prices for their products and to reach customers faster.Cofounder Louis de Kock experienced supply chain inefficiency and fragmentation first-hand growing up on. a farm in South Africa.In response, he and the rest of the Nile crew “set out to build an online marketplace that would enable farmers to trade transparently and at a lower cost, while limiting the amount of food waste through the supply chain,” de Kock tells AgFunderNews.Starting initially as a marketplace for produce sales, Nile has since evolved into a full agribusiness platform that offers everything from fertilizer to financing. Farmers can not only trade produce across multiple regions, but also directly access supplies from manufacturers thanks to Nile’s Inputs Marketplace.Companies such as Nile are in AgFunder’s Ag Marketplaces & Fintech investment category, which grew 77% in developing markets in 2024, according to AgFunder data. [Disclosure: AgFunderNews’ parent company is AgFunder.]With a total funding of $561 million across 96 deals, the category represented 49% of all upstream funding in developing markets in 2024.As de Kock explains below, this is to be expected, given the given the fragmented nature of most developing nations’ agricultural industries.AgFunderNews (AFN): What motivated you to start the company?Louis de Kock (LDK): I grew up on a vegetable farm in central South Africa. It was apparent that the way fresh produce is traded through traditional markets, with multiple layers of intermediaries between farmers and end consumers, is exactly the same as the way my grandfather traded produce, despite all the technological and logistical advances.We set out to build an online marketplace that would enable farmers to trade transparently and at a lower cost, while limiting the amount of food waste through the supply chain.AFN: What are the top services you offer farmers?LDK: What began as a marketplace for streamlining fresh produce sales has evolved into a comprehensive digital farmer ecosystem.Today, Nile offers agricultural supplies, financing, and data services all under one platform. Farmers can seamlessly manage their entire agricultural cycle—from ordering seeds and fertilizer for planting to procuring packaging materials post-harvest—with financing enabled through Nile’s banking partnerships.The platform’s integrated approach allows farmers to sell their harvested crops through Nile’s marketplace to local and international buyers, guided by comprehensive data services, with the option to receive instant payment upon delivery.AFN: In which African markets do you currently operate?LDK: We connect farmers based in Southern Africa, with buyers across Africa using road, air and sea freight