Tanzanian agritech startup MazaoHub recently announced an oversubscribed $2 million pre-seed funding round to scale its hybrid model, which combines AI-powered soil intelligence with in-person farmer support centers.
The investment includes $1.5 million in equity led by Catalyst Fund, with participation from Nordic Impact Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, elea Foundation, Impacc, and DOB Equity. An additional $500,000 in non-dilutive capital from the Livelihood Impact Fund signals a strong investor appetite for blended finance models that tackle climate adaptation.
Charles Rapulu Udoh sat down with Geophrey Tenganamba, CEO and Co-Founder of MazaoHub, whose story is a compelling account of resilience, preparedness, and optimism in the face of adversity.
Launch Base Africa: Happy to have you join the conversation. First of all, congratulations on the recent fundraising by MazaoHub.
Geophrey: Thank you.
Launch Base Africa: It’s particularly rare in Tanzania, where you don’t have many startups raising funds like you do in other places in Africa. How do you feel about the whole fundraising experience?
Geophrey: Sometimes when I see the news, I think, “Is this happening?” You know, especially in Tanzania, it’s very, very rare to have this. I can tell you it’s very rare, especially when you talk about Tanzania itself. Even now, I’m still surprised that we have reached this point.
We were operating without funders, with no expectation that someone would come and invest. And now they are here. We feel blessed, but at the same time, we don’t feel privileged. We feel like we have to be an example for others to learn from. Sometimes there is this fear that we have to succeed, so that other investors will also have trust in other Tanzanian startups. We feel like we are carrying something for others, so it has to be a successful company. We cannot afford to be another startup that gets funding and then disappears. We really need to do something that will have a positive impact and show other investors that you can also invest in Tanzania, that you can invest in more AgriTech companies. .
Launch Base Africa: That is a remarkable achievement. Let’s get to the investors. I understand Catalyst Fund was a major investor in the company. How did that happen? How did you attract them, because most of them have offices in Nairobi, Kenya? How did they find you?
Geophrey: So, of course, Catalyst Fund is the first investor, but not the largest investor. The largest investor is Nordic Impact Fund; they have invested more than $500,000.
Speaking of how we met the first investor, Catalyst Fund, they are the ones who connected us to all these opportunities. They played a very big part in bringing on board all the other investors. It started during the Africa Food Summit in Tanzania in 2023, when we shared our pitch deck with some of the partners who were organizing the event. We also got connected with the government. By the way, MazaoHub is a product of the government of Tanzania.
I would like to say openly that it is the government which played a very big part in getting us exposed to investors. They have a program called “Building a Better Tomorrow (BBT),” which is the president’s initiative to support youth farmers in agriculture. The government has given some youth 10 acres of land to farm. We were selected and invited to join as part of the BBT youth program for ICT in agriculture.
The government connected us so we were able to attend the Africa Food Summit in Tanzania — the government paid for that. We were also able to join the World Food Forum in Italy — the government paid for that. By being exposed to those major events, we shared our pitch deck. Luckily, Maelis from Catalyst Fund was able to see the pitch deck from those events. She said, “I saw the pitch deck and thought, ‘This is a very interesting company. I’d love to know more.’”
Then they called me and sent someone to come to our office immediately. They were like, “Wow! You don’t have any investors? You have been doing all of this by yourself?” They were surprised. That was when they said, “We’re going to invest in your company.” That was when the due diligence started with Catalyst Fund. At that time, no one in Tanzania, not even local investors, had this trust. They were the first visitor we had who wasn’t a client, but an investor.
After a few months of due diligence, they invested. Then they invited us to the Africa Tech Summit in 2024, where I was able to meet Mercy Corps Ventures. I remember I struggled to speak to one person there because he was so busy, but after the event, we had a chat, and that is how I was able to get another investor, which is Mercy Corps Ventures.
Then, Nordic Impact Fund joined. They saw a story about us that shared by Catalyst Fund. This prompted one of the founders, Elisabeth, to reach out to us. She came to Tanzania to do the due diligence herself. She went to the field, saw the farmers, spoke to the farmers, and she was surprised. It took her about one month to conduct the due diligence and then invested that month.
Of course, other investors like the Elea Foundation were connected to us by Catalyst Fund through their network. We were able to get a €450,000 partnership contract, which is non-dilutive funding, from them to scale our technology. All thanks to Maxime Bayen of Catalyst Fund, who is one of the greatest people I’ve ever seen. He was recommending us to investors so they would invest in MazaoHub. That was when Elea Foundation joined and started their due diligence, and this year they invested.
We were also fortunate to meet Karen, who was then the Chief Investment Officer of Catalyst Fund. She patiently sat us down and demystified the entire process, teaching us how bringing in the right partners could be beneficial. It was her guidance that helped us overcome our fears. Later, when she became the CEO of DOB Equity, that foundational trust led to them investing $300,000 in our company.
And then there’s Impact-Linked Finance, whom I met during the Africa Tech Summit this year. Actually, at that summit, we won and became the “Best AgriTech Company in Africa.” We have an award for the best AgriTech innovative company in Africa. And last year, we also won the Delta40 competition for “Best AgriTech and Climate.” This year, we are also a finalist at the IFA Activate Challenge. We are the only African startup among the 13 finalists.
So that is how we were able to get those six investors: Catalyst Fund, Nordic Impact Fund, Mercy Corps Ventures, the Elea Foundation, and DOB Equity.
Launch Base Africa: Interesting. What exactly does MazaoHub do, and what is the inspiration behind it?
Geophrey: The concept for my company, MazaoHub — which is Swahili for “Crops Hub” — came from a very personal and painful experience I had as a smallholder farmer growing up with my grandmother. When I was 17, my grandmother had saved my school fees, but we desperately needed to plant crops, so we decided to use that money to buy seeds. We went to the shop, bought the seeds, and planted them, but nothing grew. We had been sold fake seeds. Because of that, I couldn’t go to school for six months. I was filled with rage and went to confront the seller. He called his police friends, and I spent a brutal night in a cell while my grandmother cried outside in the cold. The pain of that night, and the realization that this was a common injustice for most smallholder farmers, motivated me.
When I was released, I went back to the shop and simply told the man, “I will be back. I will find a way and come back and destroy all of you people who are selling fake products.” My grandmother’s advice gave my anger a purpose: “Find a way to study, come back, and save all the other farmers.” This became my mission.
I founded MazaoHub to address the most critical and overlooked challenge farmers in Africa face: a severe lack of close agronomic support. It’s a challenge I find infuriatingly neglected by other startups, who only focus on input distribution. The ratio of extension officers to farmers in Africa is shockingly low — one person can be responsible for 3,000 to 15,000 farmers — leaving most smallholders like orphans, struggling with a painful, expensive cycle of trial-and-error farming.
Farmers spend enormous amounts of money on inputs unnecessarily; they’ll buy one herbicide, it won’t work, they’ll buy another, and eventually, the crop dies. This makes input suppliers rich and keeps farmers poor, as suppliers only care about sales, not crop performance or productivity. This lack of data-driven agronomy is why there’s a crippling lack of productivity across the continent. For example, a factory in Tanzania imports wheat from Russia because it’s 35% cheaper than buying from local villages, where low productivity forces farmers to sell at high prices. It’s clear that without the kind of data-driven service that MazaoHub provides — allowing farmers to make informed decisions and track performance — productivity will remain low, and the injustice I experienced will continue for millions of smallholder farmers.
This mission has inspired us to build an agricultural intelligence engine for Africa, and I believe agriculture is our continent’s greatest asset — it is the land, the resource God has blessed us with. My vision is for us to build something as significant as Amazon or Alibaba, but for the agricultural sector, connecting rural farms globally. To achieve this, we are establishing a new agronomy services delivery standard by stepping in where the private sector needs to complement the government’s efforts. We start at the fundamental level: we provide low-cost soil kits to collect essential soil data. This is the first step because you can’t offer effective agronomic services without knowing the soil’s composition.
The next part of our process is our innovative software, which is accessible both online and offline via web and mobile. This platform takes the data collected from the soil kits and provides farmers with personalized agronomic guidance. Crucially, we also established physical, trusted points of support — our MazaoHub Farm Clinics. These clinics function like a hospital for farming: farmers can come in for soil testing, book appointments for an agronomist to visit their farm, and purchase quality inputs, much like a pharmacy. I am a self-taught extension officer with a deep, practical background in agriculture, having run an agro-vet shop and provided services long before starting MazaoHub. This informed perspective is central to how we design our solutions.
To ensure we can scale our impact quickly, we operate on a partnership model. We franchise our technology and operational knowledge to existing agro-vet shops and farmer organizations, transforming them into “Farm Clinics, powered by MazaoHub.” So far, we’ve reached over 80,000 farmers and partnered with more than 400 agro-vet shops, also employing over 128 extension officers on an “Uber for extension” model.
My fantastic co-founder, Adelard Josephat Urassa, is our CTO. He is an engineer with a strong background in developing complex systems, including Tanzania’s central university admission system, which is where we met while I was working in the finance department. We are truly like brothers, united in this mission to ensure that wherever you see a farm touched by us, you see the “MazaoHub signature” of high productivity and regenerative farming.
Launch Base Africa: What does competition look like for Mazao?
When I think about competition, my biggest concern isn’t the local companies here in Tanzania. The real competition for a technology business like ours will come from the global companies that are coming into Africa. However, even they aren’t my immediate focus. My biggest challenge, and my biggest fear, is figuring out how to drive technology adoption among farmers. With 25 million farmers in Tanzania, maybe less than 5% have access to basic precision farming tools. The hurdle isn’t competing for the small existing market; it’s transforming the vast majority of farmers so they are ready and able to adopt our technology.
That’s why I don’t view most local companies as competitors; I see them as potential collaborators. People often ask if I compete with companies like East African Foods, but I partner with them so they can use our data to source produce. Others ask if I’m competing with soil kit producers in Kenya. I’m not a “soil kit guy” — the kit is just a tool we use. I’d rather integrate their soil kits into our platform, saving us the cost of production and allowing us to focus on our core service. I believe the agriculture sector is too complex for this kind of siloed thinking; Africa is too big for us to waste time competing.
I embrace others because I see MazaoHub as an ecosystem. I invite other AgriTech startups to join us so we can solve these enormous challenges together. The need is so immense that we must work collaboratively. To give you an idea of the scale of this need, we have already reached 80,000 farmers, but we have an astonishing 500,000 farmers currently waiting to be onboarded onto the MazaoHub platform. We are intentionally holding back our growth due to resource limitations, but the demand is clearly overwhelming. It confirms that the problem is not a lack of market or competition, but a massive, unmet need for the technology we provide.
Launch Base Africa: How does MazaoHub’s revenue model work?
Geophrey: First of all, we were making money before we raised funding. Remember I told you about the soil kit? We sell the soil kit to agribusinesses. For those who can’t afford to pay upfront, like our 400+ partner Farm Clinics, we give them the soil kit without charging them. They perform the soil test for farmers, and we share the revenue: they take 40%, and we take 60%. We do the same with our 180+ freelance extension officers. Our system is automated so you cannot get the soil test results and recommendations without depositing the fee first.
We also offer subscription for agronomy services. This is a major revenue stream. Our proposition to a farmer is “system and hands” — we give you our software and a dedicated extension officer who will support you all the way from land preparation to harvest. We charge them an annual subscription fee of 50,000 Tanzanian Shillings. Imagine how cheap that is.
All our Farm Clinics are also licensed to sell inputs on consignment. Big partners, like OCP, will bring their products to our centers to be distributed to farmers, and we make a commission on those sales.
The biggest part of our innovation is the analysis. For any product distributed through our network — seeds, fertilizer, herbicides — our system provides a dashboard showing the performance of that product. Big input manufacturers are coming to us because they want to know how their products are performing in the field.
The climax of MazaoHub is our market linkage platform. We collect all the farm-level data, which becomes visible through Cropsupply.com, which we are turning into a global crop-sourcing engine. We match farmers with warehouses and make them visible to buyers who want to source produce from the grassroots level. They can see the full traceability — how the product was produced, what inputs were used, etc. We get a commission from facilitating this trade.
So that is how we make money. But the biggest future of our business is the data and intelligence we are going to generate in the coming years.
Launch Base Africa: From your experience, what do you think are the biggest challenges for startups in Tanzania in terms of accessing global investors and scaling? Tanzania has a huge population of young, innovative people, but you hardly hear about them. What do you think is wrong?
Geophrey: The way I was able to get investors was through the connection from Catalyst Fund. When I joined them, I joined the “Catalyst Fund club.” When I say “club,” I mean you are in a certain group, an ecosystem, with people who can help you move forward. This is what I believe is the same in countries like Kenya. There is an ecosystem that is exposed and is responsible for pushing other startups to go far.
Here in Tanzania, we are not in that club. We are not that connected to the right ecosystem. That is the biggest challenge. Many startup founders are in the wrong connections, so they aren’t able to connect to the right opportunities. I know very good startups here, some much better than me. They just need someone to look at them and say, “This one is good.” But because they are not connected, they give up.
Launch Base Africa: Looking back, what lessons have you learned as a founder? Knowing what you know today, what would you have done differently to not take this long to arrive at this point?
Geophrey: First of all, the thing which I am doing now has been in my heart since 2014. It is something I always wanted to do, but I never had the confidence that I could achieve it. There was this fear that kept me from starting. I wish I had listened to my heart and started this eight years ago. I had the idea in my head and was just watching. I knew the challenges other companies would face because they weren’t starting from the agronomy level, but I had this fear of not doing it myself.
Launch Base Africa: You mentioned an extensive due diligence process. How were you able to handle that?
Geophrey: It’s one of the toughest things in my life. Because of the due diligence, there was a point we told Catalyst Fund, “This is too much!” It felt like, “Guys, you are killing us!” Every day meetings, every day new questions. It’s not as easy as people think. There were moments when you really burn out.
But while going through the due diligence, I learned a lot about the business and how to put my things in order. I came to realize that when you want to build a very big company, it’s not for you alone. It’s about the people who put their trust and money in you. It’s about your staff, investors, customers, and partners. I learned that business is not a selfish journey. It’s about being the reason for others to succeed.
Launch Base Africa: Insightful. Are you looking at raising more funds in the future?
Geophrey: Yes, we are looking forward to raising our Series A in 2027. For now, we want to manage what we have until then. I forgot to mention the support from the European Union and UNDP. Before we got any funding, we would not have a soil kit without the UNDP. They played a very big part. They gave us $50,000 through the FUNGUO program to pilot the design of our soil kit. We had to manage that money so carefully while testing the kit. That money played a catalytic role which enabled us to get where we are today, so I must thank them.
Launch Base Africa: Thanks a lot for speaking with us today, Geophrey. We wish you the best on your journey.
Geophrey: Thank you so much for having me.
