SANDI AI Wins $50,000 GoGettaz Prize for Farmer Lending

In Short

• SANDI AI won the $50,000 GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize at the Africa Food Systems Forum Summit in Kigali.
• The startup says its AI model helps lenders score smallholder farmers who lack collateral.
• The company has not shared key performance data like lenders, portfolio size, or default rates.

What Happened

SANDI AI, a Uganda-based startup, has won a $50,000 GoGettaz Agripreneur Prize at the Africa Food Systems Forum Summit in Kigali. The prize went to the female-led grand prize winner.

SANDI AI says it builds an AI credit scoring system, meaning software that estimates whether someone is likely to repay a loan using patterns in data. Its pitch targets smallholder farmers who are often rejected by banks and microfinance lenders because they lack collateral, which is an asset like land title, a vehicle, or property that backs a loan.

Founder Nabakka Sandra argues that collateral checks can miss real “ability to repay” signals. These signals could include yield history, farm productivity, and evidence of reliable buyers.

The startup said the $50,000 will support product development and expansion into more farming communities.

Why It Matters

Alternative credit scoring for farmers is a crowded space in African fintech and agritech, and many products struggle once lending portfolios face real shocks like weather and price changes.

For SANDI AI, the bigger test will be performance metrics over time. That includes how many farmers have been scored, which lenders use the system, and default rates after at least two farming seasons.

The broader thesis is familiar across African lending, that “thin file” borrowers, people without formal credit histories, are not automatically high risk. Some lenders already use other data sources and workflow tools to reach underserved borrowers.

Until more startups publish repayment outcomes, claims that AI unlocks collateral-free farmer lending will remain hard to verify at scale.