CoopLink: One verifiable record for agricultural cooperatives

Q: Is the data secure?

Data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is role-based, and the cooperative decides who can see what.

The problem

Not unbankable. Just unseen.

Three in four agricultural SMEs in Sub‑Saharan Africa can’t get a loan. Not because the businesses are weak, because a cooperative doesn’t run on paper. It runs on paper plus WhatsApp plus a spreadsheet plus last year’s project app. None of it adds up to a record a bank can trust, so a sound business stays invisible, and the loan officer who wants to say yes can’t.

Aceli Africa / Dalberg Advisors, the “missing middle”

Fragment A

The paper ledger

Cash book, receipt stubs, and the chairman’s memory. Accurate until it rains.

Fragment B

The WhatsApp group

Prices, pledges, and photos of weigh‑slips, four thousand messages deep.

Fragment C

The spreadsheet

One laptop. One password. One version of the truth, maybe.

Fragment D

Last year’s app

Built around one donor’s indicators. Abandoned with the project.

None of these is wrong. Together, they are unreadable.

The platform

One ledger, kept by the cooperative itself.

CoopLink replaces the stack with one living record: members, deliveries, payments, stock. Captured once, on a phone, right at the weighing station. Everyone who matters sees the same truth.

09:42● in the ledger

Produce intake

Highland Coffee Growers Co‑op

MemberAlice N. · M‑0412

CropArabica cherry

Weight42.5 kg

Quality gradeA

Total dueUGX 148,750

Saved ✓, straight into the ledger

Save & print receipt

The Field App: one entry, made once,
at the point of work.

One entry becomes three views: the cooperative runs on it, the financier funds against it, the buyer trusts it.

Captured in the field

Logged once at the weighing station, straight into the ledger. No retyping, no lost slips.

Computed, not kept

Balances and stock derive themselves from the ledger. No reconciliation, no end‑of‑season archaeology.

Shared on your terms

Partners see verified aggregates, never a farmer’s name. The cooperative decides who sees what.

Cooperative members with the day’s produce at the collection point — One entry, at the point of work.

Traceability

Grown here. Provable anywhere.

Europe now asks where every bean grew. On CoopLink, the answer already exists: every delivery is tied to a mapped plot, photo‑backed, and tracked batch by batch from the first handful to the export dossier. Traceability isn’t a second project; it’s a by‑product of the day’s work. The record that unlocks credit is the record that keeps the EU market open.

Plot‑level geodata Photo‑backed receipts Batch‑level chain of custody Due‑diligence‑ready records

A farmer's cupped hands holding freshly picked red and green coffee cherries over a basket — Traceable from the first handful.

The bridge

A bridge between two worlds.

On one side: Africa’s agricultural cooperatives, doing real business far from where the decisions are made. On the other: the banks, insurers, buyers, and NGOs looking for exactly them. Between the two sits a data gap that costs everyone: field visits for the financier, survey seasons for the NGO, blind sourcing for the buyer, and a locked door for the cooperative. CoopLink is the bridge. Verified data flows one way; finance, markets, and support flow back.

The gap it spans: an estimated $65 billion a year in unmet agri‑SME financing across Sub‑Saharan Africa, Aceli Africa / Dalberg Advisors

Who it’s for

One record. Every seat at the table.

For cooperatives

Run the day. Own the record.

Run the day from a phone: intake, payments, stock. Simple enough for day one.
A receipt for every farmer. Trust grows with the books.
Know your cash and stock tonight, not at season’s end.
Walk into the bank with books they can actually read, and keep your EU buyers as EUDR lands.

For NGOs & development partners

Evidence that outlives the project cycle.

Evidence‑based M&E from live field data, not survey season.
Standardised indicators across the whole portfolio, always current.
Lower M&E cost, professionalised cooperatives, and capacity that stays after the programme ends.

For banks, insurers & impact funds

Close the data gap. Cut the field visits.

Underwrite and insure from live records, not ones reconstructed for the application.
Monitor remotely: one read‑only view across your portfolio, fewer field visits, lower cost to serve.
Comparable records across cooperatives, so due diligence finally scales.

For buyers & international markets

See what’s really there.

Discover cooperatives with verified volumes and quality history.
Source EUDR‑ready, traceable from the plot up.
Talk to the source directly, provenance included.

A cooperative chairperson standing among sacks of coffee in the cooperative warehouse

The record belongs to the cooperative.

Partners see verified aggregates, never a farmer’s name, plot, or ledger line without the cooperative’s say‑so. The books stay where they have always belonged: in the cooperative’s own hands. CoopLink just makes them impossible to ignore.

The builders

Built from both ends of the bridge.

Field experience with cooperatives in East Africa. Engineering in Addis Ababa. Business development from the Netherlands. CoopLink is built where the problem lives, and where the capital sits.

Sanchit Lohani

Co‑founder · CEO

International Food & Agribusiness at HAS Green Academy, the Netherlands. Worked hands‑on with agricultural cooperatives in Uganda through Agriterra, and with carbon project developers in India. Leads product, partnerships, and business development.

Nebyu Assefa

Co‑founder · CTO

Cybersecurity student in Addis Ababa with a builder’s obsession for agri‑tech and agri‑finance. Leads engineering: built for rural realities, with security designed in from the first line of code.

Working toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals

2Zero Hunger

8Decent Work & Economic Growth

9Industry, Innovation & Infrastructure

17Partnerships for the Goals

FAQ

Questions, answered straight.

Who owns the data?

The cooperative. CoopLink keeps the record on the cooperative’s behalf, and partners only ever see verified aggregates, never a farmer’s name, plot, or ledger line without the cooperative’s say‑so.

Does it work offline?

Yes. Field staff log deliveries, payments, and stock on a phone with zero connectivity. Records sync automatically once a connection returns, and conflicting entries are flagged for review, never silently overwritten.

What does it cost?

CoopLink is running pilots now. Pricing is being designed with pilot cooperatives of every size, so the final model fits the cooperative’s reality, not the other way around.

Is the data secure?

Security is designed in from the first line of code: data is encrypted in transit and at rest, access is role‑based, and the cooperative decides who can see what, at every step.

How is it different from a spreadsheet?

A spreadsheet is one version of the truth, maybe. CoopLink is a ledger: balances and stock derive themselves from what was logged, so the record matches what actually happened in the field.

What devices does it need?

A phone. The field app runs on the phones people already have, and it works online or off, so nothing changes at the weighing station.

How long does onboarding take?

Pilots go from the first conversation to live records within a season. The record starts with the day’s work, not a data‑entry project.

Who is CoopLink for?

Agricultural cooperatives across Africa, and the banks, insurers, buyers, and NGOs that are looking for exactly them but cannot see them yet.

Bridging the gap betweenfarmer organisations and the world.