Giving Compass' Take:

• One Kenyan produce company, Twiga Foods, is working to improve the lives of small-scale farmers and vendors through innovative technology and education.

• How can invest in more technology that brings farmers together? 

• Meet this social entrepreneur who is behind Africa's uber for farming. 

Twiga Foods is connecting 13,000 farmers to retail vendors across 20 of Kenya’s 47 counties.

The country’s small-scale farmers—who produce 80 percent of Kenya’s fruits and vegetables—face many agricultural challenges. Climate change is causing increasingly erratic weather patterns, poor infrastructure (just 6 percent of the roads are paved) makes it difficult to bring produce to market, exploitative brokers take advantage of uneducated farmers, food safety practices are poor, proper storage and warehousing are lacking, and distribution methods can be unreliable. And according to Kikonde Mwatela, Chief Operating Officer of Twiga Foods, older farmers largely dominate agricultural production and are slow to adopt new technologies and farming practices.

Twiga Foods is on a mission to help small-scale farmers and vendors by building the foundation of a transparent and reliable marketplace to buy, sell, and trade produce in Africa. It links small-scale fruit and vegetable farmers to vendors by picking up produce from the farmer and delivering it to the vendors’ doorstep. This provides vendors with fresh, high-quality produce for consumers. Mwatela tells Food Tank, “there is a growing demand for agricultural produce in urban areas, but many small-scale farmers struggle to get their produce to the markets that help them earn enough to support their families.”

Read the full article on Twiga Foods by Stacey Wilcox at Food Tank.