Elohor Ebieroma is building an agri-tech marketplace aimed at solving some of the most persistent challenges in Africa’s agricultural trade. As Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer of Cubeseed, she is developing digital infrastructure designed to improve trust, transparency, and access across fragmented agricultural value chains where delayed payments and limited financing have long been major obstacles.
Agriculture remains one of the largest employers in Sub Saharan Africa, accounting for more than half of the region’s workforce. However, despite its importance, productivity levels remain among the lowest globally. The World Bank links this gap to weak logistics systems, limited access to financing, and highly fragmented markets.
At the same time, the African Development Bank projects that Africa’s food and agriculture market could grow to $1 trillion by 2030. Yet inefficiencies in trade, storage, and payments continue to slow that potential.
It is within this environment that Ebieroma and her team are building Cubeseed, a technology driven marketplace designed to introduce structure into agricultural trade and improve how transactions are carried out across the continent.
Her vision focuses on addressing long standing problems such as unreliable payment systems, lack of verified identities, and limited access to credit for farmers and buyers. By creating a more structured digital environment, she hopes to make agricultural trade more predictable and efficient.
What inspired the shift into agriculture technology
For Ebieroma, the decision to focus on agriculture came after years of working across fintech and digital platforms, where she noticed a recurring issue.
According to her, many markets with strong economic activity still lack the basic infrastructure needed for trust and efficient exchange.
In her words, agriculture highlighted this gap more clearly than any other sector.
She explained that fragmented systems, delayed payments, and poor access to financing do not just affect operations but also weaken the foundation of how trade is conducted and trusted.
Cubeseed was built in response to this challenge. Instead of simply creating another marketplace, the platform introduces structured transactions supported by escrow systems, identity verification, and integrated financing tools.
How experience across multiple tech companies shaped her approach
Before Cubeseed, Ebieroma worked across several technology driven companies, including Jumia, Fintrak Software, NowNow Digital Systems, and M KOPA. In these roles, she worked closely with data systems, product performance, and revenue-driven platforms.
Her experience across these organisations shaped her understanding of how scalable systems are built, especially in environments where reliability and trust are critical.
One of the key lessons she draws from this experience is that scaling is not just about growth in numbers. It is about building systems that can maintain performance, stability, and trust as they expand into new markets.
Why building for Africa requires a different mindset
Ebieroma believes that global investors and observers often misunderstand African digital markets. A common assumption, she says, is that these markets are too fragmented or too early for scalable technology solutions.
However, she argues that the reality is different. Demand already exists, but the systems needed to support that demand are still developing.
In her view, the real gap lies in infrastructure such as payments, identity verification, logistics, and trust systems rather than in market readiness.
This creates a unique opportunity for companies like Cubeseed to build foundational systems rather than simply digitise existing processes.
What happens when governance meets speed in product building
Her experience working between the UK public sector and African tech ecosystems has also influenced how she approaches product development.
She describes the UK environment as one that prioritises governance, data integrity, and long term sustainability. In contrast, African tech environments often require speed, flexibility, and rapid innovation under constraint.
For her, combining both perspectives allows for a balanced approach that supports both structure and adaptability. This balance, she believes, is essential when building systems meant to scale across diverse markets.
Can trust be built into agricultural marketplaces?
One of the biggest challenges in digital agriculture platforms is trust. In many markets, trade still relies heavily on personal relationships rather than verified systems.
Ebieroma sees this as one of the core barriers to scaling agricultural trade.
Without trust, she explains, transactions become slower, risk increases, and market efficiency declines.
Cubeseed is designed to address this directly by embedding trust into the system itself. This includes features such as escrow-based payments, verified user identities, and structured transaction flows that reduce uncertainty for both buyers and sellers.
Beyond technology, she also sees her work as part of a broader effort to strengthen the ecosystem. She has been involved in mentoring early-stage founders, particularly around product development, data-driven decision-making, and scalable platform design.
What is the long-term vision for agriculture and technology in Africa
Moving forward, Ebieroma believes agriculture will play a central role in Africa’s economic transformation. However, she also believes that technology must evolve beyond simple digital tools and become a true infrastructure for trade, financing, and logistics.
Her focus with Cubeseed is to contribute to that shift by building systems that solve real structural problems rather than surface-level inefficiencies.
In her view, technology has the potential to unlock large-scale economic growth, but only when it is designed around the realities of the markets it serves.
For her, the goal is not just to build a successful platform, but to help create a more connected and efficient agricultural economy across Africa.
