July 31, 2025
By operating in Nigeria, Senegal, and Liberia — and plans to expand into Ivory Coast and Kenya — more than 1,000 farmers use the UfarmX platform.
Fintech entrepreneur and founder Alexander Zanders decided to be proactive when the world shut down due to COVID-19 by selling his crypto holdings in exchange for 100 acres of Nigerian farmland to help farmers have access to credit and scale their products, AfroTech reports.
He launched his company, UfarmX, in 2020, after his journey of trading mobile devices led him to Africa, where he learned about innovation through direct, on-the-ground experience. But he didn’t come from a farming background. The Baltimore native graduated from Temple University in Philadelphia, where he founded an export company during a global shift in the supply chain. Trading devices in Nigeria, the United Arab Emirates, and the Dominican Republic introduced him to cryptocurrency, back when Bitcoin was only $10.
However, when his daughter was born in 2015, his priorities shifted. “I always tell people I did what any rational person would do when the world feels like it’s ending,” he said. “I started farming.”
After being inspired by a trip to Moultrie, Georgia, where he witnessed Black laborers picking cotton by hand, he wondered why laborers in Africa were still doing the same. “I started asking why Africa, with all this arable land and talent, was still exporting raw goods for pennies and importing finished goods at a premium,” he said during his travels to Africa between 2016 and 2019.
“The math didn’t make sense.”
UfarmX became more important after Zanders learned banks have a hard time trusting farmers, limiting them with the proper resources they need. “Banks don’t trust farmers. No data. No collateral. No credit history. So they get nothing,” Zanders said. But, with the use of AI, proprietary software, and field-level insights, UfarmX has bridged a gap for farmers to receive more financial access with live-action data to build credit profiles.
The platform takes photos of each farmer, then logs their GPS coordinates to track input history, crop cycles, and smartphone use.
According to FoodTank, low levels of production are often attributed to the lack of technology in sub-Saharan Africa, which is linked to the limited use of technology. Zanders and UfarmX stepped in to help the demographic advance by employing local agents, described as youth who are a little more familiar with new tech and how it can serve the community. “This model allows us to overcome both technological and trust barriers,” the fintech founder explains.
“By leveraging the social capital of these agents, we can build trust more easily with farmers who might be skeptical.”
The formula works as Fatoumata Mballo, a farmer from Senegal, witnessed her crops drop thanks to a rainy harvest season, but using UfarmX has turned things around. The company helped Mballo by analyzing regional data and found that post-harvest losses are common in her area.
By operating in Nigeria, Senegal, and Liberia — and plans to expand into Ivory Coast and Kenya — more than 1,000 farmers use the platform and have the ability to purchase necessities like seed and fertilizers with UfarmX’s “Buy Now, Pay Later” functions. Boasting that the platform is self-funded, Zanders says he learned that numbers are the most important, but more so about the impact it makes in people’s lives.
“It’s not just data — it’s dignity,” he said.
“We’re not just handing out loans. We’re building infrastructure for the people who feed the world.”
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