Almut van Casteren ran a spice export business in Kenya with her husband Jan Willem for years. At the time, she had no idea that a by-product of their spice operations — a software system — would eventually offer a solution for agricultural supply chains across Africa. That software became the core business of the van Casterens, who founded the start-up eProd in 2015. Today, eProd has grown into a scale-up operating in 22 African countries. In this interview, van Casteren talks about their market entry.
You exported chilies and peppers to Europe before the software became your main business. How did that transition happen?
Chief Revenue Officer,
eProd Solutions Limited
Ms. van Casteren, what makes your software so interesting?
It only works when data is fed into it, of course. But once that happens, it can help buyers of agricultural products manage their supplying farmers more effectively. In Kenya, like in many African countries, agriculture is dominated by smallholder farmers. Processors often source their raw materials from thousands of them. With the software, you can keep track of delivery volumes, quality, payments, and even how much fertilizer, seed, or agrochemicals have been supplied to each individual farmer.
You exported chilies and peppers to Europe before the software became your main business. How did that transition happen?
Exactly. We were working with about 8,000 smallholder farmers and needed oversight for all the reasons I mentioned. That’s how the database was created — we needed a place to feed all this information. An Excel sheet simply isn’t enough when you’re dealing with thousands of farmers. So we initially developed the software for our own internal use.
And when did you realize you could make money with the software?
We received feedback from others. At one point, a representative from an NGO visited us and said how impressed he was with the software. Many NGOs work in agriculture and want to collect data to measure the impact of their interventions. With the right configuration, the software can do much more than what we originally needed it for. We also noticed this ourselves. For example, if a farmer needed a loan from a bank, he would come to us, ask us to print the data we had collected about him, and take it to the bank.
The bank could see how much he had produced over several years and how much income he had earned. That was often enough to secure the loan. Another example: A few years ago, the Coffee Berry Fruit Fly came from Tanzania into Kenya and started affecting chili crops. With data entry, we were able to map its spread and counteract it early. So the software can also serve as a kind of early-warning system.
And then you shifted from spice exports to software…
Yes. We were living on the coast, and when the security situation around Lamu deteriorated, we moved to Nairobi. 2014 was the starting point for eProd. At the beginning, we didn’t know exactly how to enter the market. We also weren’t sure what price the product should have or what technical requirements it would need to meet. But as former spice exporters, the market wasn’t completely unfamiliar to us. We had an idea of who our potential customers might be.
More than 10 years later: Who are your customers today, and how has the business developed?
We now serve a wide range of clients — from large players in the food industry, agricultural aggregators, and cooperatives to NGOs, government institutions, and banks. There are many examples of agricultural processors: breweries like East African Breweries source sorghum, Browns cheese factory buys milk, and sugar processors obtain some of their cane from smallholder farmers. Banks often join as third parties to provide microloans to farmers.
You also mentioned NGOs…
Yes. A major partnership is with the NGO Africa Rice in Côte d’Ivoire. Africa Rice aims to increase rice production across several African countries to improve food security. The organization develops specialized seed varieties for different climatic conditions. They use our software to measure seed quality and to track available quantities of seed.
These data are also relevant for exports to markets like the EU, where supply chain due-diligence rules apply…
Exactly — that’s why we also work with exporters. In markets such as the EU, USA, and increasingly China, importers are not only concerned with quality control. They also want oversight of supply chains for environmental and social reasons. The EU, for example, wants to avoid importing goods linked to child labor or deforestation.
How do importing countries carry out these checks?
The most important regulation at the moment is the EU Deforestation Regulation (EUDR), which is set to be enforced from the end of 2025. Companies must ensure that no deforestation has taken place to produce the agricultural goods they import. Usually, customs officials perform spot checks on documents at the port of entry. The higher the deforestation risk associated with a country, the more frequently shipments are checked. If required documents can’t be provided, companies face significant penalties.
How can your software help with this?
Each farmer must undergo a “legality check.” With respect to EUDR, we can assign every delivery to a GPS-mapped polygon — a specific piece of land marked on a map and associated with a particular farmer. Each polygon has a risk classification regarding deforestation. If the plot has been farmed — for example, producing coffee — for many years, the deforestation risk is low.
And what if forest has been cleared?
Then a careful analysis is needed to determine whether deforestation occurred and to what extent. An integrated risk assessment allows such cases to be detected early. This means that during farm-level buying, compliant produce for export can be separated from non-compliant produce. The risk of non-compliant goods entering the supply chain becomes very low.
How expensive can the software be, and what technical requirements must it meet?
The software has to be robust, simple, and affordable. Many aggregators and farmers don’t have a lot of disposable income. Our main competitors are simple, inexpensive payment apps because, for many users, being able to handle payments is the most important feature. We offer many additional services, but there are also licensing, training, and implementation costs. Users need to see the value for themselves, and these added costs have to pay off quickly.
What do you mean by “robust”?
Robust mainly means that it must work offline. In the fields, mobile internet is often unavailable. The software must allow data entry even without connectivity, and the data should upload to the cloud later. Communication in rural areas often happens via USSD — a data service that can be used even with non-smartphones.
Lastly, what trends do you see in Africa’s agricultural sectors, and where can your software help?
Food security is a major issue. As the population grows, production must increase as well. Some countries are relying more and more on food imports because they can’t keep up with demand. Weak supply chains and worsening soil acidity are part of the problem. Another factor is the increasing controls in export markets. For Kenya, agricultural exports are an important source of foreign currency. Besides coffee and tea, Kenya exports macadamia nuts, fruits, and vegetables. For farmers, it’s essential to meet import requirements. That’s why digitalization in agriculture is so important — and our software contributes to that.