Welcoming SAIS Cohort 2026: The Next Generation of African AgTech Founders

At this year’s SAIStival in Nairobi, our annual community gathering and the starting point of the Investment Readiness Programme, we welcomed 12 new start-ups from nine countries into the SAIS family. Cohort 2026 arrived with fresh energy and bold ideas, connecting with the outgoing 2025 cohort, mentors, investors, and ecosystem partners from day one.

Biolife Tech (Benin) is a digital platform connecting farmers directly to export and processing markets for crops like pineapple, with field mapping, GPS geolocation, and predictive harvest planning tools. eMaisha Pay (Uganda) is building the operating and financial infrastructure for agro-traders in Africa, digitising supply chain management and farmer payouts through a SaaS platform with embedded payments. Fanaka Technologies (Zambia) is a mobile-first platform empowering MSMEs, especially women and youth, with financial literacy, flexible micro-loans, and integrated micro-insurance. Forested Foods (Ethiopia) integrates carbon insetting with supply chain traceability, sourcing natural ingredients from smallholder farmers practising regenerative agriculture and agroforestry. Kumbatia Seafood (Kenya) offers a vertically integrated artisanal value chain solution for fishermen, providing bait, equipment, boats, offtake, cold chains, and access to export markets for sushi-grade fish. Nintai Aquaculture (Kenya) provides a tech-driven farm-outgrower model for shrimp aquaculture on the Kenyan coast, offering inputs, precision farming tools, and market access to local farmers. NoorNation (Egypt) delivers solar-powered, modular units that provide clean electricity and safe water, including desalination and irrigation pumping, to agri-businesses and rural communities. Nuru Solutions (Kenya) is a data intelligence platform providing farm-level satellite crop monitoring and AI yield prediction to financial institutions and agri-businesses. Obens (Morocco) offers an end-to-end digital traceability platform that maps natural ingredient supply chains from producer to importer, verifying sustainability metrics including living wages and carbon emissions. OnlyPlants (Kenya) uses locally sourced ingredients to produce plant-based foods, including nut and seed butters, plant-based sauces, and milk made from local Bambara groundnuts. ShareCARD (Uganda) is a digital project management system that enables intermediaries working with farmers to track progress, workflow, resource distribution, and identity verification. TDX (Ghana) is building a digital platform and smart infrastructure that connects small farmers and merchants to larger buyers and processors, making the sourcing, storing, and trading of raw materials more efficient and transparent.

We look forward to supporting these founders over the coming months as they work towards investment readiness and their next stage of growth.