In Musanze, a potato does not travel directly from farm to plate.
It can pass through collection points, transporters, wholesalers and markets before eventually reaching a restaurant, school or household.
At every step, there is an opportunity to create value. There is also an opportunity to lose it.
For smallholder farmers, unreliable market information, inconsistent prices, delayed payments and post-harvest losses can reduce what eventually reaches their pockets. Buyers face a different version of the same problem: inconsistent quality, damaged produce and uncertainty about whether what arrives will match what they ordered.
Rwandan agritech company Mulika Farms is trying to address that gap.
Its digital platform connects farmers more directly with buyers while introducing greater transparency around price, product quality, payments and traceability.
But technology is only part of the model.
For a digital marketplace to work, farmers first need to be able to use it.
Mulika therefore combines its technology with farmer onboarding, verification and digital literacy support.
Once registered, farmers can indicate the volume and quality of produce available, view market prices and weather information, receive digital payments and connect with buyers.
Buyers, including restaurants, schools, wholesalers and retailers, can place orders, track deliveries and purchase produce that has undergone grading and quality checks.
This matters because the problem Mulika is attempting to solve is not simply digital access.
It is a market coordination problem.
For Igihozo Belise, a farmer in Kinigi Sector in Musanze District, the platform has created another route to market.
She currently sells approximately 500 kg per season through Mulika and has ambitions to increase the volume she sells through the system substantially.
Her experience points to a wider question for Rwanda's agricultural sector: can technology make markets work better for smallholder farmers while creating a commercially viable model for the businesses providing those services?
Mulika's early results offer useful evidence.
Mulika was one of the agritech startups supported through the Kura Na AgTech 1.0 Acceleration Programme under Swisscontact's AgroInnovation project, implemented in partnership with Impact Hub Kigali. The programme supports agritech businesses developing solutions with the potential to improve smallholder livelihoods, with particular attention to rural women and youth.
With support from the 2025 programme, Mulika enrolled 800 smallholder farmers onto its app and enabled them to conduct transactions through the platform.
By May 2026, Mulika reported:
Women account for 62% of users, while youth account for 80% of engagement.
The numbers tell only part of the story.
Mulika operates across six districts through ten collection points and facilitates transactions beyond potatoes, including mushrooms, chicken, garlic, avocados and fruits.
Grading is an important part of the model.
Produce is sorted according to quality before reaching buyers. Buyers can therefore purchase against clearer specifications, while farmers producing higher-quality crops have an opportunity to receive differentiated prices.
The platform therefore tackles several functions within the agricultural market at once: information, aggregation, quality assurance, transactions and market connections.
The model also illustrates why scaling agricultural technology in rural markets is difficult.
Internet connectivity remains inconsistent in some communities, and digital literacy remains a barrier for some farmers. Mulika estimates that onboarding one farmer currently costs between USD 30 and USD 35.
Those constraints matter.
These challenges also point to what is needed for agritech solutions to scale: commercially sustainable models that can extend digital services and market access to farmers who might otherwise remain underserved.
That is the role the wider AgroInnovation project is exploring.
Between 2025 and 2028, the project aims to run annual acceleration programmes supporting 15–20 startups, with at least half women-led. It also aims to help 1,500 smallholder farmers improve productivity and food security, support 500 farmers to increase annual incomes by at least 20%, and strengthen climate resilience for another 500 farming households.
For Mulika, the next challenge is scale.
For Rwanda's agricultural sector, its experience poses a more interesting question: how much more value could remain with farmers if the systems connecting them to markets worked better?