Babban Gona, a Nigerian AI-powered agritech company, has raised a $7.5 million debt round from the British International Investment (BII), the UK’s development finance institution, to offer capital to smallholder farmers in Northern Nigeria.
The company uses AI to offer end-to-end services, including credit, training, support with harvesting, storage, and access to markets, to smallholder farmers. This helps the farmers overcome barriers such as climate change.
Babban Gona’s franchise model enables top-performing farmers to operate micro-enterprises, providing their peers with inputs and working capital financing. As these enterprises scale, Babban Gona supports them in accessing funding from local banks. Through this structure, Babban Gona wants to raise yields and increase incomes for roughly 140,000 smallholder farmers in northern Nigeria by 2029, backed by BII’s investment.
“Our partnership with Babban Gona is a great example of how BII is using catalytic capital to support innovative, high-impact business models that transform lives and economies,” said Benson Adenuga, BII’s West Africa regional director and head of office for Nigeria. “By backing this pioneering franchise model, we are not only addressing a critical financing gap but also helping to build a more resilient and productive agricultural sector and support smallholder farmers in a region that is often overlooked by investors.”
Beyond food security and higher earnings, the investment’s core focus is climate resilience. Babban Gona supplies drought-tolerant seeds, climate-smart inputs, and multi-peril area yield insurance that helps farmers withstand and recover from climate shocks.
The commitment aligns with BII’s mandate to support rural communities in underserved markets and follows recent agricultural investments in companies like AgDevCo and Johnvents.
Babban Gona also uses its AI model, trained with over 2 million images, to help farmers assess issues with their farm using only pictures. Kola Masha, the company’s managing director, told TechCabal that the company began using AI in 2018.
The company uses AI to help rural women run after-school education programs that teach English literacy to children and provide high-quality antenatal screening to the women.
“Our early work in AI enabled us to build very strong relationships in the space,” he said. “We were one of 12 organisations around the world brought into a small monastery in Lake Como with the likes of Nvidia, OpenAI, and Google to think about the role of AI for global development.”
Babban Gona is also using AI tools to build and launch the equivalent of a Tesla for northern Nigeria, supporting farmers to acquire two-wheeler e-bikes and build charging stations to run those assets, Masha said.
Mark your calendars! Moonshot by TechCabal is back in Lagos on October 15–16! Join Africa’s top founders, creatives & tech leaders for 2 days of keynotes, mixers & future-forward ideas. Early bird tickets now 20% off—don’t snooze! moonshot.techcabal.com
