It’s Tuesday, and today we’re talking about MazaoHub, a Tanzanian agritech startup. Founded by Geophrey Tenganamba and Adelard Josephat Urassa, the company recently raised $2 million in a pre-seed round led by Catalyst Fund, with participation from Nordic Impact Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, elea Foundation, Impacc, and DOB Equity. Of that amount, $500,000 came as non-dilutive capital from the Livelihood Impact Fund.

It’s far from the first time I’ve written about an agritech startup aiming to become a one-stop solution for smallholder farmers. And yet, every time I do, it turns out the challenges facing these farmers, and sometimes entire agricultural systems, are far more complex than they first appear.

This is the case this as well.

While I would call agriculture the driving force of Tanzania’s economy, the vast majority of people, 65.6%, are actually engaged in agriculture. So for most agriculture is their livelihood.

There are countless ways to look at the issues farmers face, but to understand MazaoHub’s role, it helps to focus on three: lack of knowledge, lack of trusted partners, and lack of financing.

Farming done well requires knowledge, whether learned formally, gained through experience, or provided by others.

In a country where only 15.1% of the population has completed secondary school and just 29% have internet access (even less in rural areas), formal education isn’t a realistic source of that knowledge.

Experience helps, of course, but it takes time and doesn’t guarantee the right lessons. You can easily learn the wrong ones. And because you don’t know what you don’t know, limited exposure keeps your progress capped.

That leaves external help.

But Tanzania has a chronic shortage of agricultural extension officers—the people meant to provide technical support. Estimates differ, but there’s roughly one officer for every 1,000 farmers, while the World Bank recommends one for every 500.

This shortage has real consequences:

All this inefficiency costs Tanzania’s farmers about $1.5 billion annually, roughly 2% of the country’s GDP.

Farmers in Tanzania use just 15–20 kg/ha of fertilizer, far below other developing markets. You might assume that’s because they can’t afford it or because stores are too far away. That’s part of it, but the real issue is trust.

In one study, 77% of farmers said they doubted the quality of fertilizer, even though tests showed only 1% of samples had issues. Since fertilizer quality can’t be easily verified and most farmers lack formal training, suspicion fills the gap. Add to that high turnover among agro-dealers (half of suppliers in one study disappeared within the research period), and you see why mistrust runs deep.

So, farmers’ skepticism makes sense emotionally, but not factually.

This problem isn’t unique to Tanzania. Whether in Nigeria, Ghana, or Indonesia, farmers across the developing world struggle to access financing. Despite agriculture making up over a quarter of Tanzania’s GDP, the sector receives only ~15% of total credit. And most loans come not from banks but from family, friends, and cooperatives.

What’s stopping farmers from going to the bank?

For one, only about half of banks even offer agricultural loans. Interest rates hover around 15–16% and are widely seen as too high. And as with fertilizer, perception becomes reality: if farmers think it’s expensive, it doesn’t matter if it’s fair.

Two other barriers exist, which are collateral and geography. Over 90% of farmers say lack of collateral keeps them from borrowing, and a similar share say lenders simply aren’t nearby.

When you look closely, both the financing and trust problems trace back to knowledge. Farmers don’t use fertilizer because they think it’s poor quality. They don’t borrow because they don’t understand how loans work or where to get them.

MazaoHub is built around fixing that gap, making knowledge the foundation for solving everything else.

I usually don’t tell founders’ personal stories. There are plenty of places that do that better. But this one’s hard to skip. Here’s how Geophrey Tenganamba tells his story

Geophrey did channel that anger in the right direction and MazaoHub was born. The initial idea came from his experience with fake seeds, but the company now addresses far more than that. The best way to think about what MazaoHub has become is through three layers: the farm management layer, the selling layer, and the financial layer.

A farmer’s journey with MazaoHub begins when an extension officer visits the farm with a soil testing kit. From a single sample, farmers learn about soil pH, moisture, and 15 nutrients — from nitrogen to chloride. The data is uploaded to MazaoHub’s data hub and combined with information from the Tanzania Meteorological Authority: satellite and geospatial data on temperature, humidity, wind speed, and more.

This data is synchronized with MazaoHub’s database and analyzed using AI to generate personalized recommendations. In practice, this means farmers get step-by-step guidance across all stages of the crop cycle:

Advice is shared through two channels: SMS and extension officers. Farmers report back to officers on what worked and what didn’t, and that feedback loops into MazaoHub’s AI engine. Extension officers manage their side through the MazaoHub app or web platform, where they collect and input data and explain the platform’s output to farmers.

Another part of this layer is the Farmer Excellence Centers (FECs). These are physical hubs where farmers can test soil, book agronomist appointments, buy quality inputs (like certified seeds and fertilizers), rent equipment (tractors, planters, dryers), or access training. Training happens on demo farms that showcase recommended practices, and these farms also serve as testing grounds for new inputs. The centers are run by third parties but certified by MazaoHub.

The data MazaoHub collects also helps buyers. The company runs an e-commerce platform called CropSupply, positioned as a global crop-sourcing engine. It’s somewhat similar to what Complete Farmer offers, but broader in scope. Through CropSupply, buyers get access to:

On the farmer’s side, producers are matched with aggregators to sell their harvest. CropSupply Hubs collect and sort produce, conduct quality checks, register batches digitally for traceability, and connect farmers directly with buyers.

Finally, MazaoHub addresses financing. In partnership with CRDB Bank and agro-dealers, farmers can access loans for inputs with eligibility based on soil data and repayment capacity. The company is also piloting weather-indexed insurance and village-level savings schemes. The idea is simple: help farmers pool savings to collectively buy inputs in bulk, lowering their costs and risks.

MazaoHub operates on a foundation it calls Tech and Touch. Like many solutions in the region, regardless of industry, the company recognizes the need to pair technology with a human layer.

On one side, technology is the unlock. It gives farmers access to tools and information they never had before, and it does so at scale. But that same strength is also a limitation: because technology introduces a completely new way of farming, it can feel unfamiliar and intimidating. Farmers often need a guiding hand, and MazaoHub provides exactly that.

Scaling technology is straightforward. Scaling people is not. That’s why MazaoHub works with more than 400 agro-vet shops and employs 128 extension officers under an “Uber for extension” model. To make this network effective, the company developed clear protocols, standardized service delivery, performance tracking systems, and compensation tied to verified activities. All designed to ensure quality and consistency while reaching farmers even in remote areas.

That’s Tech and Touch in practice.

Another key part of MazaoHub’s model is how a single soil test unlocks value for nearly everyone in the agricultural chain. The initial soil data becomes the foundation for insight and coordination across all players:

All of this value starts from one small point: the soil test. Test the soil, adjust how it’s managed, improve output, repeat.

MazaoHub’s revenue model is built on several layers: a SaaS-style subscription, individual service fees, and transaction commissions.

The SaaS-style model bundles many of the company’s services into three tiers, each targeting a different audience, from smallholder farmers at the entry level to cooperatives at the top.

Beyond that, MazaoHub also earns revenue through:

The biggest challenge MazaoHub faces is execution. Its model ties together hardware, software, people, digital platforms, and physical hubs — a complex ecosystem with many moving parts.

Take the distributed network of third-party centers and field agents. They all need proper training, management, and incentives. The larger this network becomes, the harder it is to maintain consistency and quality.

MazaoHub does a lot of lifting here. It needs to recruit farmers and field agents, ensure smooth communication between them, find aggregators who can properly evaluate and store crops, and keep buyers satisfied with both quantity and quality.

And if any link in that chain fails, the whole system does. At least it might. If buyers can’t find enough volume and churn, aggregators lose motivation and follow them. Farmers then struggle to sell their harvest and eventually churn too.

An integrated model is powerful when it works, but is a liability when it doesn’t. If any cracks appear, it will be very difficult for MazaoHub to piece everything back together.

MazaoHub builds a full loop around the farmer: diagnose the soil, translate data into clear actions for the farmer to take, help execute those actions on the ground, aggregate and quality-check the harvest, and settle payment while feeding everything back into the system. That loop solves real, daily problems.

As long as farmers see tangible improvements, adoption should grow naturally. More farmers mean more data, which improves recommendations, which in turn boosts yields and attracts even more farmers. At the same time, more buyers will join CropSupply. Some will be drawn by lower prices created by competition among farmers; others by higher quality enabled by better guidance. The result is stronger network effects on two fronts: data and marketplace. Those effects raise switching costs for everyone involved.

Another thing MazaoHub already benefits from is its breadth of products and involvement across the entire value chain, which creates plenty of opportunities to generate revenue. It’s able to take advantage of those high switching costs. And there are likely more ways it can monetize its offerings over time.

After looking at many agritech companies, I don’t think there’s another industry where so many players try to integrate every step of the value chain. It’s like if Uber ran its own driving schools, managed repair shops, and provided loans to its drivers.

That says a lot about both the difficulty and the opportunity here: both how hard it is to build such a business, but also the potential upside and ways the business can grow.