Innovating Across Africa’s Animal Agriculture Sector: The SAIS Livestock Programme Cohort

Alongside our flagship Investment Readiness Programmes, SAIS runs a dedicated support stream for livestock tech start-ups from Africa. These founders are tackling some of the most pressing challenges in animal health, dairy, poultry, aquaculture, and sustainable protein. Like their peers across the broader SAIS community, many gathered in Nairobi this February for SAIStival, where they connected with fellow founders, mentors, and investors to kick off their programme journey.

Emata (Uganda) partners with exporters, processors, and cooperatives to offer AI-powered digital financial services, including credit, to smallholder farmers in the agriculture and dairy sectors. GenePlus (Kenya) offers high-quality, genetically superior breeding stock and related services, combining advanced breeding techniques with local knowledge to improve livestock performance for African farmers. Koolboks (Nigeria) produces solar-powered freezers with Pay-As-You-Go technology, offering eco-friendly and accessible refrigeration through a Cooling-as-a-Service model. Pullus Africa (Nigeria) optimises the poultry supply chain through data-driven technology, supporting farmer clusters with guaranteed market access, high-quality inputs, advisory services, and financing. Samaking (Kenya) promotes fish consumption and improves livelihoods for fish farmers and fishers through reliable market connections and co-financed cold chain infrastructure. SpaceAI (Kenya) digitises the dairy value chain through an AI-powered chatbot accessible via WhatsApp, enabling smallholder farmers to receive real-time and fair payments. TradePulse (Kenya) provides agro-processors with a cashflow tracking tool and embedded revenue-based working capital financing, helping them plan sourcing, production, and sales with ease.

Together, this cohort represents a new generation of entrepreneurs building more resilient, data-driven, and inclusive livestock systems across Africa.