Alexander Zanders

Techpoint Africa's January 2026 feature dates Alexander's pivot to agriculture to 2015. Alexander moved from New York to Maryland. A Nigerian friend named Charles, who had started soybean production, invited Alexander to the Sunbelt Agricultural Expo in Moultrie, Georgia, which sparked an interest in food production. During a Thanksgiving visit to Nigeria in November 2015, Alexander decided to establish a cassava processing plant.

The feature says Alexander invested in a feasibility study and a bankable business proposal. Things did not go as planned. A change of administration after an election and a downturn in the economy left conditions unstable. From 2016 to 2019, Alexander traveled across Africa, attended conferences and studied local farming, looking for where to add value instead of exporting raw produce.

The feature says the COVID-19 pandemic forced Alexander to think about life's journey. A first idea, linking diaspora investors with land leasing and farm management, ran into infighting over the land. Alexander took a step back, bought another 100 acres on separate land, and began farming directly. Alexander says about four years of bootstrapping allowed room to experiment and learn from failure. The feature names one of Alexander's key learnings as the lesson that Western playbooks cannot simply be copied in Africa.

The feature says UfarmX runs a B2B model in which retailers use UfarmX technology at point-of-sale terminals to extend inventory on credit to approved farmers. UfarmX guarantees the retailers' repayments and steps in if a farmer defaults, and an insurance partner covers 80 percent of the risk. Credit scores come from a proprietary algorithm using geospatial and socioeconomic data, such as farm size, crop type and projected yield. The feature states, without naming a source, that UfarmX maintains a default rate below 10 percent on its collateral-free loans, given as farm inputs. UfarmX also aggregates farmers' produce, sells it for the farmers and secures purchase orders. Revenue comes from processing, transaction and platform fees, plus interest spreads.

The feature says UfarmX is operational in Nigeria and Senegal. The feature says Alexander secured credit for a women's farmers' group and then received some donations to build post-harvest storage. Alexander says refrigerated 20 to 40 foot containers fitted with solar panels were provided to the group. With the containers, Alexander says, yields tripled and revenues more than doubled. Alexander hopes UfarmX becomes a foundational credit tool for lending to farmers across Africa, one that banks might use, and reaches the same status as credit bureaus such as Experian and Equifax in the Western world.