In the latest episode of Marketplace Africa, CNN explores the agritech company, SwiftVee, who are looking to transform the sector by moving auctions online. Using their tech, small scale farmers can now reach buyers across the continent via livestream webcast auctions for cattle that were otherwise off limits due to physical restrictions.
Founder and director of Agro Queen, Thlalefo Dithebe, is based in a remote corner of the Northern Cape, meaning selling livestock beyond the local community meant a long, expensive and risky journey to a physical auction. She tells CNN about the benefits of the online auction system, “In the online auction, your cattle will just be here next to you. You don’t need to be travelling. There are also more buyers as well.”
SwiftVEE, a digital auction company launched in 2019, facilitates between 118 million to 237 million dollars in annual trade. The company’s CEO, Russel Luck, believes the real success comes from empowering small-scale farmers, “We’re a growing industry and we are digitising the whole value chain. We have at least 40,000 smallholder farmers on our platform through our books, but we are proudest on the smallholder farmers who have become commercial farmers.”
Beyond the sale, the digital shift is changing how lenders and buyers perceive value. By maintaining a transparent digital record of data and sales on the SwiftVEE platform, farmers are building the credibility needed to secure their financial future. Cattle breeder Moalisi Duncan Serapelwane explains that a positive record, “Tells the bank, that tells the farmer, that tells everybody that there’s something good in this man.”
Dithebe believes digital auctions are the ultimate equaliser for her brand, a tool to democratise the industry and ensure that in the modern marketplace the quality of the herd is the only thing that counts, “The space is giving different farmers of different ages, of different genders, of different race groups, access to the same markets. It’s fair for all of us. You are able to know that whoever is buying from you is not really going to know who you are, but they want to focus more on quality.”
These interviews were featured on the latest episode of Marketplace Africa on CNN International.
