After a selection process lasting several months, the Digital Africa initiative has awarded seed funding to start-up Biolife Tech. This is a milestone for the Beninese agritech start-up in its international expansion.

Success story from Benin

Slowly but surely: it took Biolife Tech three years to earn its place in West Africa's food business ecosystem. It all started in 2022. As a student of computer science, Lucien Medjiko took an interest in the challenges facing the pineapple industry. He’d grown up in a farming family, so he knew how tough it is for small producers to access the market.

Working with Ulrich Djido, an agricultural engineer who later became his partner, Lucien developed the e-pineA app to connect pineapple sellers with local and international buyers.

From that promising start, Biolife Tech soon went beyond mapping farms to predicting harvests and connecting supply and demand. They also deployed field agents to meet farmers and show them how to implement ecologically sound practices.

‘We raise producers' awareness of environmentally friendly practices. The aim is not only to improve crop quality, but also to better meet market standards and requirements. To limit the use of chemical inputs, we encourage them to adopt organic fertilizers,’ Medjiko said.

The e-pineA app will soon award sustainability scores to the top farms, to reward their efforts in sustainable agriculture. That can appeal to international buyers looking for quality organic products.

Today, Biolife Tech works with nearly 2,000 producers, helping them sell 30 tons of pineapples a week into a network of 200 local and international buyers. Thanks to funding from Digital Africa, the start-up aims to double its targets before the end of the year.

‘This round of financing is a major boost to our field teams, helping us to continue developing our application and attracting new importers. Digital Africa also gives us privileged access to a network of key logistics and air freight partners. This is invaluable support to make it easier for us to meet the challenges of shipping our products internationally,’ Medjiko said.

This first round of financing is a springboard that its young director hopes will seal the deal on new strategic partnerships in the coming months.

Biolife Tech teaches us that it can take several years to strengthen its foundations. It's an example to follow.

Brad Kpoahoun

AgriHack partner and head of development at Future Studio

This round of financing is a major boost to our field teams, helping us to continue developing our application and attracting new importers.

Lucien Medjiko

Biolife Tech

Founder

Turning ambition into reality

One Medjiko’s first launch pads was the AgriHack competition, which the start-up won in 2023. That initiative was organized by the NTF V FastTrackTech project in partnership with Epitech innovation center.

‘After our success at AgriHack, we received support in business development and product management. From then on, our solution reached a new level of maturity: we enhanced it with new functionalities and improved the user experience,’ he said.

In 2024, when the Digital Africa seed fund approached Future Studio – Epitech's innovation center – to target Benin's most creative start-ups, Biolife Tech was an obvious choice.

‘Biolife Tech is a well-structured company in a high-potential sector. It has never rushed into anything, but has taken the time to understand its ecosystem and build a serious project,’ said Brad Kpoahoun, AgriHack partner and head of development at Future Studio. ‘The team is competent, dynamic and ambitious. Its platform is functional and intuitive, and meets a precise need. It's not surprising that customers have taken to it, since Biolife Tech has had the genius to deploy technical support in the field, as close as possible to its target.’

The success of this fundraising is not just good news for Biolife Tech. It also sends a strong signal to all digital entrepreneurs in Benin.

‘This fund-raising also reveals the attractiveness of our national start-ups. Not so long ago, there was no talk of innovation in Benin. Today, Future Studio is fully justified,’ said Kpoahoun.

Next March, the innovation center is preparing to welcome back Digital Africa, as well as a cohort of international business accelerators such as Flat6Labs. The search for Benin's future talent is on.

About the project

The Netherlands Trust Fund V (NTF) programme (July 2021 – June 2025) is based on a partnership between the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the International Trade Centre. NTF V supports SMEs in the digital technology and agribusiness sectors in Benin, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Ghana, Mali, Senegal and Uganda. Its ambition is to contribute to an inclusive and sustainable transformation of agri-food systems partly through digital solutions, to improve the international competitiveness of local tech start-ups and to support the implementation of the export strategy of IT&BPO companies.