Nigeria’s Babban Gona Raises $7.5M From BII to Expand Farmer Financing
TLDR
- Babban Gona, a Nigerian agritech company that uses AI to support smallholder farmers, has secured $7.5 million in debt financing from British International Investment
- Founded in 2010, Babban Gona offers end-to-end services including credit, training, harvesting support, storage, and access to markets
- BII’s investment is intended to strengthen climate resilience. Babban Gona supplies drought-tolerant seeds, climate-smart inputs, and multi-peril yield insurance
Babban Gona, a Nigerian agritech company that uses AI to support smallholder farmers, has secured $7.5 million in debt financing from British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution. The funds will provide working capital to smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria.
Founded in 2010, Babban Gona offers end-to-end services including credit, training, harvesting support, storage, and access to markets. Its franchise model allows top-performing farmers to operate micro-enterprises that distribute inputs and working capital to peers, to improve yields and incomes. The company aims to reach 140,000 smallholder farmers by 2029.
BII’s investment is intended to strengthen climate resilience. Babban Gona supplies drought-tolerant seeds, climate-smart inputs, and multi-peril yield insurance to help farmers withstand climate shocks. The company also leverages AI trained on over 2 million images to help farmers diagnose crop issues and provide rural women with literacy and healthcare tools.
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Key Takeaways
Babban Gona’s $7.5 million financing underscores the growing role of AI-powered agritech in addressing Africa’s food security and climate challenges. Agriculture accounts for more than 25% of Nigeria’s GDP, yet smallholder farmers—who produce most of the nation’s food—struggle with limited financing, poor inputs, and weak market access. By combining AI tools with a franchise-based financing model, Babban Gona addresses structural barriers while building scale. Its AI is not only used for farm diagnostics but also for community programs such as women-led literacy and healthcare initiatives, showing broader social applications. BII’s investment also fits within a wider strategy to back sustainable agriculture in underserved markets, following its commitments to AgDevCo and Johnvents. If Babban Gona succeeds, it could offer a model for how climate-smart agriculture and AI can work together to improve farmer incomes and resilience, while attracting private capital into one of Africa’s most critical sectors.
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