Don’t get Watson Matsa started on farmers and banks, as we did. By the swimming pool at Somerset Westview Hotel in Nairobi, he talks about both with the conviction of a man who has spent enough time inside a bank to know why banks don’t understand farmers.
It is a Friday evening, July 26. Around us, Nairobi is warming up for the weekend. There is coffee on one table, tea on another, and every so often someone reaches into their pocket for a cigarette. Matsa, meanwhile, is talking about soil, rainfall, and credit scores.
The founder of eSusFarm Africa wasn’t always an agriculture man. He studied economics and accounting at Rhodes University in South Africa and later worked in credit analytics at FNB. Finance was supposed to be the thing. Then an idea he encountered at university got him thinking: information unlocks capital. His problem with that idea was Africa. What happens when the information needed to unlock capital simply isn’t there?
That question eventually led him to smallholder farmers and eSusFarm Africa.
Matsa still talks like a banker—risk, underwriting, cash flows—but increasingly thinks like a farmer. Banks, he says, are built around the neatness of a salary arriving every month. Farmers earn seasonally, save for the unexpected, and wait. Perhaps, he suggests, farmers are not the problem. Banking is simply too rigid.
He misses one thing about his old life.
“The SMS that comes on the 24th of the month,” he says, laughing about what he misses most from corporate life. “The SMS saying the money has arrived—on time. A good credit score. Being able to plan trips with my family.”
Now, there is payroll to worry about, farmers to convince, and a continent’s financial assumptions to challenge.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
You grew up fascinated by financial systems, not farming. How did a banker end up spending his days thinking about soil, weather, and smallholder farmers?
It goes back to when I was studying at Rhodes University. I was double-majoring in economics and accounting, and there was one book that really had me in a chokehold. It said that information unlocks capital, and that capital markets have enough information to do so.
I thought: in Africa, that’s not true. There isn’t enough information flowing fairly for capital to flow.
Initially, I was thinking about small businesses: how do we get data on them that can facilitate capital flows? I took the idea to my co-founder, who has a PhD in agricultural economics. He said, “What if this applies to agriculture? Money isn’t flowing to small farmers because there isn’t enough information.”
I asked him what data we would need. He said soil, climate, farmer-reported, and crop information. Those are some of the pillars you need when assessing risk. You can look at the soil and say: this farmer needs a certain fertiliser, so let’s finance that. You can look at the weather and determine that the farmer needs insurance.
We started mapping the data points that affect financial decisions.
I also worked at FNB in the credit analytics space as a project manager on projects aimed at improving credit scoring. That helped me understand how banks think.
Take ongoing risk management: even if I vet and qualify you for a loan, I still need to monitor you until it is repaid. That kind of ongoing risk-management system doesn’t really exist for smallholder farmers.
We took on the task of building it.
If we spoke to your younger self in South Africa, what career would he swear he’d never end up pursuing?
I always wanted to be in finance. It’s my skill set; it’s my thing.
I would advise my younger self not to pursue anything unrelated to STEM—science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. When we were growing up, the question was: how do you put food on the table? STEM was where a lot of employment was happening.
For me, mathematics could mean accounting, economics, or banking. Engineering was a good space. Technology was a good space. Science was a good space.
I still think STEM is important in Africa. We’re still trying to master how we compete in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.
You’ve lived in boardrooms and on farms. Which world has taught you more about human behaviour?
They’ve taught me different sides of human behaviour.
The boardroom taught me about governance and how to implement policies and procedures so that, when you’re doing something, you can replicate it.
The ground taught me that interpersonal relationships are more important than almost anything else. You may be a smart guy, but if you don’t know how to relate to the person opposite you and communicate in an easy, simple, and articulate way, you won’t get their buy-in.
The ground taught me how to simplify complex concepts. On one side, I’m very technical. The other side is: how do you communicate that technicality so that someone with a Grade Seven education can understand what you’re saying and the value you’re bringing?
It has made me a much better communicator. Working on the ground has also taught me empathy and how to relate to people. Those skills transfer back into the boardroom.
You often describe finance as infrastructure. What’s one lesson from banking that agriculture desperately needs, and one thing banking could learn from farmers?
One thing banking could learn from farmers is that incomes aren’t earned in the same way.
Banking tries to structure things around very rigid rules: you get paid monthly, so I’ll charge you monthly. Farming is seasonal. You receive money and then have to preserve it for a much longer period until the next tranche comes in.
Banking has been too rigid. Income flows aren’t always monthly. They can be daily, weekly or every four months. Banks need to start adapting to people’s income cycles rather than dictating them.
Farmers also understand how to use money prudently because they’re constantly preparing for eventualities. It could be a weather event or a disease outbreak. They develop a resilient mindset around preserving cash so they can survive those events.
That’s something banking can learn from farming.
People often assume farmers are poor because they lack money. Do you think the bigger problem is that financial systems have never really been designed for them?
Absolutely. The financial system was designed around salaried people—monthly earners.
But farmers and people in the informal economy can earn daily. They are micro daily earners. You may not be earning $2,000 every month, but you could be earning $20 a day.
Small farmers and small businesses are earning money, but they’re earning smaller amounts consistently.
If banks understood this better, they could tap into this class of daily earners rather than focusing almost exclusively on monthly earners.
The financial system has been designed around formal employment rather than people’s actual income potential and earning patterns.
Every founder has one meeting that changed everything. Which conversation altered the direction of eSusFarm more than any funding round ever could?
We always wanted to get into finance, but we didn’t know where to start. Was it credit? Was it insurance?
Then we had a conversation with Benny van Rooy, the former CEO of Grobank. He said, “Watson, you’ve got enough data, and I like calling you a data company. But what you need to understand is that banks can’t lend if there is no insurance.”
That conversation was the beginning of our understanding that banks come after insurance; they don’t come before.
Banks want assurance. If you cannot assure a bank of some stability in earnings, you’re going to struggle to unlock finance.
Farmers are largely an unsecured portfolio, so insurance—or assurance—becomes important. The assurance comes from data; the insurance comes from underwriting. Without those two things, banking won’t come in.
That insight changed the way we thought about penetrating the market.
Your platform combines AI, mobile money, blockchain, and insurance. How do you stop yourself from falling in love with technology instead of the problem you’re trying to solve?
For us, it has always been about not letting the small farmer fall behind.
The back end of the system can be sophisticated. It can use AI, blockchain, credit scoring and insurance. But we still make sure the delivery model can come through something as simple as USSD, so it’s accessible through a device the farmer already has.
We’ve learned that even if you’ve got complex technology in the background, you still have to deliver it simply at the last mile.
We don’t allow technology to override the mission of supporting the farmer. Technology is there to help us do that better.
If I spent a week shadowing you, what would surprise me most? Would I find you writing code, negotiating partnerships, visiting farms, or worrying about payroll?
Everything.
But you’d probably see a lot of partnership work. We have a partnership-led growth strategy. We believe in embedding our technology within existing systems.
People ask me, “Where is your app?” I tell them we don’t want to build an app. We want to be involved in what people are already using.
If you’re in Kenya and using mobile money, let me provide the solution through that ecosystem. If you’re using WhatsApp, let me provide the solution on WhatsApp.
We have MTN as a partner. We have Sanlam as an insurance partner. We also have Microsoft as a technology partner helping us scale.
Building standalone apps and systems doesn’t always make sense. I’d rather integrate our technology into existing infrastructure with a captive market than go door-to-door to acquire every user ourselves.
The second thing you’d see me worrying about is payroll. As we expand into more countries, we need larger teams, and funding in Africa remains limited.
What we’ve found is that many African investors want to invest in profitability, whereas American investors are often more willing to invest in technology for the future before profitability. They’re willing to lose money in the short term to jump the next curve.
That affects us. We have to find capital elsewhere, including grants, to help us build for that future.
When was the last time a farmer challenged an assumption you’d made and forced you to rethink the business?
We assumed farmers would willingly report information about their operations.
We built technology to collect information, and part of it depended on farmers’ self-reporting. We thought they would do it because they understood that reporting was necessary to access finance.
That was one of the biggest lessons we learned: many farmers don’t understand why they need to report. They don’t necessarily care about reporting.
We call some of them “sceptical survivors”. These are farmers between roughly 45 and 65 who have been farming for years. They’ve taken their children to school through farming. They have no appetite for a 35-year-old Watson coming to tell them to report information when there’s no clear incentive.
Why should I report? If I report, what’s the immediate benefit?
We’ve had to connect reporting directly to finance. The more information you provide, the better we can monitor and understand your risk. Then we can score that risk and potentially finance it.
We had to create an incentive structure for farmers to start reporting.
Founders often say they “empower” communities. Was there a moment when you realised the community was actually empowering you?
Yes.
We’ve profiled about 380,000 smallholder farmers across Uganda, South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Eswatini. From that pool, we had about 20,000 smallholder farmers actively using our solution.
What we didn’t predict was that those 20,000 farmers would become our ambassadors in their communities.
The farmers we’d met and trained in person started onboarding thousands of others through word of mouth.
It taught us something very important about rural communities: word of mouth is incredibly powerful.
Start with a small group and make sure you do a damn good job with that group. They’ll tell the rest of the community, and other people will follow.
That’s also how the technology can scale. Don’t worry about trying to get all 380,000 people yourself. Get the 20,000 right, and they’ll help bring the rest.
You left the predictability of banking for entrepreneurship. What luxury from your corporate life do you still secretly miss?
The SMS that comes on the 24th of the month.
That SMS says the money has arrived on time. A good credit score. Being able to plan trips with my family.
I can’t plan like that now because I’m reinvesting whatever money I get into this baby. I miss the predictability of income.
What I don’t miss is the ceiling on how much I could earn.
What I love now is that there’s no ceiling. It’s an open canvas. If we work hard enough, do the right things, and execute the right strategy, the earning potential can become bigger than I could ever have imagined.
What’s the most uncomfortable truth you’ve learned about African agriculture that investors and policymakers rarely acknowledge?
They misunderstand the multiplier effect of agriculture.
We’ve analysed this and found that a single farmer who does well can create jobs throughout the value chain.
Think about a farmer buying the right seed. The seed provider may need to hire someone due to increased demand. Then there are transporters. There’s the fertiliser company. When production increases, you need more workers and perhaps tractors.
When the crop is ready to be harvested, you need people to do so. Then it needs to be packaged, transported, exported, or distributed. Eventually, it reaches shops and the end consumer.
The multiplier effect of agriculture in Africa is enormous. One successful farmer on one hectare can create jobs across the value chain.
Policymakers and investors don’t fully understand that. Not focusing on agriculture in Africa is almost a sin, given its economic multiplier effect. There are very few sectors capable of creating jobs across so many different parts of the economy.
Imagine you’re appointed Finance Minister for a day—not Agriculture Minister. What’s the first financial rule you’d change to make farming a genuinely attractive business for young Africans?
One of my dreams is actually to become AU president, so I’ve thought about these things a lot.
If I were Finance Minister, I would provide better financing solutions for young people—a combination of grants and debt—and direct that financing towards crops that can substitute imports.
If your country has a huge rice import bill, finance young people to grow rice.
If we’re importing a million tonnes of rice and want to reduce the import bill, let’s finance young farmers to produce part of what we import.
I would focus heavily on import substitution and financing young people to produce in those value chains. It would help us become more self-sustaining in areas where we currently depend heavily on imports.
What part of success worries you most: the expectations, the visibility, the responsibility, or something else entirely?
Visibility is a big one for me.
Even as an organisation, we’re an embedded solution. We like working in the background.
Too much visibility brings too many eyes and can create enemies. I try not to be too visible personally. The company can be visible, but I don’t necessarily need to be.
I think Africans are still getting used to seeing success stories from within our own communities, and sometimes success can attract jealousy. For now, I’d rather keep myself away from too much of that.
So visibility is probably the thing that worries me most.
Complete this sentence: “The biggest lie we’ve told ourselves about African agriculture is…”
That there’s more money than you can ever imagine—and that it’s easy to get.
There is money in agriculture, but it’s not what people think. It takes time. It’s not fast. Agriculture is a slow industry.
It’s different from the financial sector I come from, where you can launch a lending product and potentially acquire customers very quickly.
In agriculture, you have to go out and train people. Then people have to understand the product. Eventually, the income starts coming in.
There’s a huge amount of training and change management that have to happen before the money comes in. That means you need a much longer runway. You have to sink money into the business before you see results.
But when the volumes eventually come, they can come in huge chunks.
We’ve done case studies where farming one hectare can involve about $3,000. Multiply that across a million people, and you’re talking about a lot of money.
The quantum can be enormous. But unlocking it requires learning, training, and ecosystem development.
A lot of investors, financiers, and bankers don’t understand that. You have to invest heavily in training and change management before you see the results.
Finally, if your children asked, “What exactly were you trying to fix?” what answer would you give that has nothing to do with AI, blockchain, or fintech?
My son actually asked me this.
I told him, “I help make food. You’re eating today, aren’t you?”
He said, “Yes.”
I asked him, “Where does the food come from?”
He said, “I don’t know, Dad.”
I told him, “It comes from a farmer. If there are no farmers, you don’t have food. So I’m trying to help farmers make more food so that you can eat.”
That’s what I told my child, and it’s probably the simplest way I can explain what I’m trying to do.
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