According to data from Briter, agtech funding is driven by fewer than 20 countries and funding patterns vary widely by region.
For instance, the majority of early-stage funding in Africa comes from accelerator programs followed by donors and a small number of angel investments.
“Africa has really been shaped by a lot of accelerator programmes. If you’ve been doing any ag tech work in Africa over the last 10 years, last five years, you will have ran into some type of ag tech accelerator,” said David Saunders, director of strategy and growth at Briter Bridges.
He was speaking at World Agri-Tech Innovation Summit Dubai in December, examining how agtech funding has evolving across emerging markets.
While grants are seen in every market, Africa relies on them most and has the lowest share of equity deals.
Additionally, Africa sees more donor participation, which impacts the type of solutions that are getting funded.
At the later stages, Africa sees most funding from development finance institutions (DFI), while funding in South Asia, SEA and Latin America, is more corporate led.
“There’s a lot more non-commercial, smaller sized grant-type of funding taking place in Africa. You’ve a lot more commercial funding with later stage capital in some of the Asian markets, with Latin America falling somewhere between the two,” said Saunders.
“Funding plays a major role in determining what scales and who exits. A big part of the reasons for what we’re seeing in Africa in the last two to three years is because the funders that are participating are particularly interested in supporting smallholder farmers… In South Asia, corporate and commercial investors are shaping the types of solutions that emerge. It’s not about one being better or worse, but about the realities ag tech companies face and how funding influences their trajectories.”
What gets funded where
Funding patterns influence the types of solutions emerging across regions.
“You’ll see that the type of funding has really shaped the type of solutions that are then coming out in Africa, compared to other regions, where you have a lot more on farm, smallholder focus solutions in comparison to what you see to the other markets,” said Saunders.
On-farm solutions dominate in Africa, focusing on smallholder farmers, farm equipment, and integrated production systems, with an emerging emphasis on climate resilience.
“On-farm digital is still drawing steady funding across the regions, but Africa is definitely where it’s standing out. And you’re also seeing a slight pivot within that region with more climate resilient solutions that are emerging – think insurance, risk management services to deal with climate risks,” said Saunders.
Briter has also observed a rise in ag biotech and science-based solutions, particularly in Latin America.
In South Asia, a lot of interest is in traceability.
“There’s been a lot of optimism around those solutions as more and more emerging more markets are plugging into global trade… where there’s a demand by consumers to know where food has come from. But we have yet see that really kind of going beyond South Asia,” said Saunders.
South Asia leads as the most active market for agtech exits
“I think that plays out in terms of the type of funders you see active in the region, those that they’re still beginning to attract,” said Saunders.
While Africa also seems to have high number of exits, Saunders pointed out the nuances in the data.
“While it does seem like they have a high number of exits, a lot of those are actually consolidations across portfolios. They’re not necessarily exits to corporates… You just haven’t started to see that in Africa.”
Agtech funding lags behind
Overall, emerging market startups are showing early signs of recovery after a post-pandemic funding slump, but the agtech sector is lagging as it faces unique challenges in attracting funding.
Saunders described the boom-and-bust cycle in startup funding in recent years. This been observed across all major emerging markets, including Africa, Latin America, South Asia, and South East Asia.
The initial surge between 2020 and 2022 was driven by “easy money” and strong venture momentum, followed by a market correction around 2023 to 2024 before showing some recovery in 2025.
However, agtech funding has not experienced the same rebound.
“While we’re starting to see some recovery in the wider startup funding environment across emerging markets, we have not yet seen the same recovery within ag tech… If you look at the broader startup space, there’s a slight upward curve, but ag tech is still lagging behind that wider recovery, said Saunders.
Moving forward, agtech funding is likely to move upstream, said Saunders.
“We’re seeing a lot more of the activity moving upstream, so away from on-farm activity, and you’re seeing a lot more biotech climate and more capital-intensive models than kind of the major SaaS models that we saw over the last the previous five to six years.”
