Why We Invested in Eyango Food: Connecting Africa's Smallholder Farmers to the World
Global agricultural trade generates over $2 trillion annually, with Sub-Saharan Africa accounting for more than $93 billion in exports. The Chad-Cameroon region represents a significant but underserved market for commodities including sesame, gum arabic, and cashew, which face active demand from buyers across the Middle East, Europe, and South Africa. However, the infrastructure connecting these farmers to international purchasers remains largely unchanged: brokers operate without shared data systems, payments require weeks to process, and no unified platform exists to manage transactions from farm through port delivery. This fragmentation costs suppliers and farmers between 5 and 15 percent per transaction.
Eyango Food addresses this gap through a digitized export corridor platform. The company manages the complete commodity trading value chain from farmer sourcing to international delivery on a single interface. International buyers access real-time pricing, digital contracts, and order tracking through the platform, while field agents based in Douala handle cross-border sourcing from Chad, verify quality standards, and manage port documentation. All products meet strict international specifications, verified through "SGS-equivalent inspection" and complete documentation including phytosanitary and fumigation certificates.
The business operates through two revenue streams: commissions on executed contracts and a SaaS intelligence layer offering market pricing and predictive analytics to buyers and agricultural stakeholders. The pre-financed trade model utilizing advance payments and Letters of Credit maintains a lean asset structure while mitigating working capital risk.
Founder Kamala Eyango brings eight years of agricultural development experience across Cameroon, Chad, and India, grounded in Cornell research on mobile technology for smallholder farmers. She previously founded EZFresh, an agriculture technology platform partnered with Syngenta. Her team includes field agents managing cross-border logistics and a technical advisor with Microsoft experience guiding platform development.
Without external capital, Eyango Food has completed five trades across Chad and Cameroon with buyers in the United Arab Emirates and South Africa. The founder built an international buyer network independently and secured purchase contracts with established commodity importers across three continents. Farmers using the platform receive pricing 20 to 30 percent above local broker rates, with advance payments providing working capital during growing seasons.
When farmers transition from local brokers offering significant discounts to verified international contracts with advance payment, the impact becomes immediately visible through higher household income, improved agricultural inputs, and better seasonal planning capability. By reducing intermediaries and enhancing supply chain coordination, the platform simultaneously decreases post-harvest losses—delivering both environmental and economic benefits for farmers operating with tight margins.
At scale, Eyango Food aims to build professional infrastructure for cross-border agricultural trade across Francophone Central and West Africa, a region sitting on productive yet underutilized agricultural land. The vision extends to becoming the default operating platform for regional commodity trade within overlooked markets.
Beyond capital, Delta40's venture studio team supports product roadmap development, financial modeling, capital strategy, and fundraising preparation for the upcoming Seed round. The studio also assists with investor engagement and storytelling to align Eyango Food with appropriate capital partners.