Agriculture

Agriculture in South Africa forms a critical part of the country’s socio-economic and socio-political stability, with a large percentage of the population’s livelihood dependant on the need to build a globally competitive sector that will be able to withstand incoming agricultural produce from the rest of the world. This sector is central to the National Development Plan where Government aims to eliminate income poverty from 39% to 0% and reduce inequality by reducing the Gini Coefficient from 0.69 to 0.6.

Core to delivering on these aspirations, is the need to develop and support an inclusive agricultural economy that should create new direct and indirect jobs and to maintain a positive trade balance from primary and processed agricultural products. For agriculture to contribute to these aspirations, the country has developed multiple policy instruments with technology innovation playing a significant role towards a globally competitive sector.

Business Unit Purpose

The Agri Business Unit seeks to build a portfolio of agriculture technologies with potential for commercialisation and to contribute towards competitive, sustainable and inclusive agriculture and agri-business value chains.

Our Objectives

In our endeavour to support a competitive, sustainable and inclusive agriculture and agri-business value chain, the Business Unit funds opportunities with the objectives of:

Supporting the creation of an enabling environment for agricultural technology innovation;

Supporting the development and demonstration of attractive agricultural technology innovations;

Facilitating commercialisation of de-risked technologies; and

Improving the diffusion of appropriate agricultural technologies to small-scale and emerging farmers.

Technology Focus Areas

• Breeding and Reproduction Technologies
• Animal Health and Nutrition
• Plant Health and Nutrition
• Post-Harvest Technologies  

Contact our Business Unit

Precious Zuma - Coordinator

Tel: 012 472 2936

Exciting Innovations

AgriProtein Technologies has successfully demonstrated their animal feed project from organic waste technology (“Nutrient Recycling”) and with late stage investment from local and international investors, will be commercialising three new products in 2016. Production to supply these identified markets will be from their fully scale commercial facility in Philippi, Cape Town.   

Mabu Soil Casings - By September 2014, the company had successfully completed all funding objectives and started transporting their first commercial product to mushroom farmers. This was possible because the company secured funding from AFGRI to finance acquisition of the Bapsfontein property. To sustain sales growth, Mabu was able to secure working capital and equipment finance form the IDC.