Our Mission

“Scaling digital Agriculture Innovations through Start-ups” (SAIS) is a programme implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

Our mission is to scale digital innovations for social impact. This we do through a market-based approach. We support tech start-ups from Africa and beyond to become investment ready and assist them in raising more funds for growth, by which the start-ups can scale their innovations to more customers and users. Our social impact indicators are, income generation (first and foremost), improved nutrition, adaption to climate change and reduction of food and plastic waste.

At present, we work in the greentech sector, encompassing agtech, foodtech and climatetech. In particular in African countries, agriculture constitutes an important economic sector, which substantially contributes to GDP and employment. However, the sector is massively underserved and lacks impactful innovation. We believe, that start-ups can change this for the better.

So far SAIS has worked with more than 80 start-ups from over 20 African countries. Close to 70% of the start-ups we could support were able to raise follow-on funding, in total over 47m USD, of which the majority is equity and debt funding. The start-ups we worked with in total reached over 1m new customers, of which over 75% reported an increase in income through using the innovation provided by the start-ups.

By 2029, we aim at having supplied 5m people with start-up innovation, helped 3,75m people to improve their income and supported a total of 200 start-ups from Africa and beyond.