Zowasel, Africa’s frontline agricultural marketplace, has secured a $100,000 investment through the 2021 inaugural UN World Food Programme’s “Zero Hunger Sprint,” where the company demonstrated its crop marketplace which operates on ThoughtAI’s revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) blockchain.
Founded by Harrisburg University of Science and Technology professor Andrew Hacker, ThoughtAI has developed the first smart digital infrastructure, a completely new blockchain-based artificial intelligence system capable of processing agricultural data and much more.
Through this UN World Food Program (WFP), Zowasel has secured investments from Guinness Nigeria Plc, a Subsidiary of Diageo, and Promasidor Nigeria Limited, a leading pan-African consumer food manufacturer. The funding was awarded on July 30, 2021 during a live event held on Victoria Island, Lagos, Nigeria.
The ThoughtAI system offers real-time market information, supply chain transparency, and accessibility to smallholder farmers across remote communities through its remote Crop Test Center infrastructures. Suitable for both online and offline markets, Zowasel can now ensure traceability and sustainability data directly from grassroot providers.
Zowasel is working with more than 1.5 million smallholder farmers aggregated across its network in northern Nigeria and has recently launched operations across Nigeria’s Niger-Delta region to support smallholder farmers across the oil palm and cocoa value chains.
The United Nations WFP developed the “Zero Hunger Sprint” as a platform to encourage innovators to put their ideas into action to eliminate hunger in Nigeria by 2030. The UN agency explains that the Zero Hunger Roundtable is a multi-sector forum aimed at collectively addressing food challenges by fostering innovative approaches. With Guinness Nigeria Plc and Promasidor Nigeria Limited investing in Zowasel, the UN WFP will work with Zowasel to provide a six-month support program designed by the WFP Innovation Accelerator, based in Munich, as well as the Innovation Hub in Eastern Africa based in Nairobi, The goal is to further develop Zowasel’s business model and to explore partnerships opportunities.
“We are glad that two giants in the global marketplace, Guinness Nigeria Plc and Promasidor, find our marketplace and its use of ThoughtAI’s intuitive technology worthy of investment. We are even more excited about the opportunity, trust, and confidence bestowed upon our young company,” says Zowasel Co-founder and CEO, Jerry Oche. “We look forward to working with these amazing companies and harnessing ThoughtAI’s blockchain technology to understand and meet their sustainability goals, supply chain, and traceability needs.”
ThoughtAI changes the way digital information is processed by embedding every piece of data with artificial intelligence. With ThoughtAI, data literally acts on its own – understanding where it came from, where it is supposed to go, and what it needs to do. This reduces the need for third-party applications, making data processing cheaper, faster, and more efficient for sustainable agriculture operations and virtually any industry that relies on data.
Says ThoughtAI’s founder, Professor Andrew Hacker, “The investments from Guinness Nigeria PLC and Promasidor represent a commitment to a more fair, efficient, and sustainable marketplace in Africa, where one doesn’t currently exist. It is an investment in ending hunger in Africa, and ThoughtAI is thrilled that our technology supports such an worthy goal.”
For Zowasel, this is more than just an investment. Partnerships with Guinness Nigeria Plc and Promasidor provide customer acquisition opportunities, adding to the users of its traceability and sustainability software across the supply chain.
This investment also will allow ThoughtAI, which recently listed its cryptocurrency, THT, on the CoinMetro exchange to improve its technical solutions, helping farmers bolster crop quality and increase productivity to meet demand.
Furthermore, ThoughtAI’s smart digital infrastructure provides extra layers of security, protecting Zowasel’s marketplace operations and supporting the applications of participating businesses, from every sector. Every piece of data is addressable and encrypted, allowing the owners of the data to determine who has access to it.
Professor Hacker explains, “As we have shown through our partnership with Zowasel, whether it is agriculture, healthcare, high-speed commuter rail, manufacturing, space solar power, or nearly any other industry that relies on data to conduct business, ThoughtAI adds efficiencies and insights that companies need to operate in the future and be competitive and secure in a global marketplace.” To repeat, ThoughtAI offers the first smart digital infrastructure.
