- AN AVOIDABLE PROBLEM
Millions of smallholder farmers in Africa can't access credit, markets, & extension services.
Only 6% of African smallholder farmers can access credit. Less than 20% use improved seeds. Approximately 40% struggle with access to extension services and reliable markets. The result? For every bag of grain an African smallholder produces, an American farmer produces five. That's a 5x yield gap.
- THE SYSTEM FAILURE
The missing piece for closing Africa's yield gap: industrial policy.
In spring of 2026, the World Bank acknowledged that its three-decade caution against industrial policy for developing nations had not aged well. In its own words, it now has "the practical value of a floppy disk." The support infrastructure smallholder farmers need to thrive was one casualty of that era.
For most of Africa, state-supported extension services, credit access, and market linkages have been systematically hollowed. The result: smallholder farmers across the continent are trapped in cycles of avoidable poverty.
Hagush is changing that.
- THE SOLUTION
Hagush is making reliable access to agricultural support the rule across Sub-Saharan Africa.
We bring farmers online. We connect them to agri-solutions. We close the yield and income gap.
Industrial policy on agriculture done right produced some of the fastest income growth and poverty relief in human history. South Korea, Taiwan, China, Vietnam — millions of people moved out of poverty. Even in Ethiopia, for a period.
But when the state is absent — whether hollowed out by decades of bad advice, starved of resources because of debt, or simply missing in action — ad hoc, one-off interventions have become the default substitute. Meanwhile, a farmer in Kenya still tends her land, earns a fraction of what she could, and takes a second job at the local construction site just to survive.
But what else is there to do?
Build what should exist. Grassroots.
From the ground up. Farmer by farmer, community by community. And anchor it into state systems. Because only the state has the fiscal resources and jurisdictional power required to drive change at the scale needed.
2x
The income gain within reach within a decade.
- WHAT WE DO
Grassroots industrial policy from the ground up.
EQUIP
We start with digital access. Affordable, connected devices are the entry point — unlocking extension services, credit, and market linkages for farmers who've never had them.
CONNECT
We connect farmers to the best available agricultural tools and services. Technology is the coordination layer — turning a fragmented landscape of solutions into reliable, context-specific support across the value chain.
ACTIVATE
We embed what works into state systems — taking validated solutions and making them part of how governments deliver agricultural support. Not a parallel structure. Part of the state's own infrastructure.
