Kifiya secures undisclosed IFC investment to scale agricultural lending in Ethiopia

Ethiopian AI-powered fintech Kifiya has secured an undisclosed investment from the International Finance Corporation (IFC) to scale its agricultural lending services. Founded in 2010, Kifiya leverages over 10 billion alternative data signals to assess the risk of first-time borrowers without formal credit histories. The company's AI models assist financial institutions in risk pricing, borrower approval, setting credit limits, fraud detection, climate risk assessment, and portfolio monitoring. Kifiya's digital platform facilitates loan disbursement and collection through a network of agents and rural cooperatives, connecting businesses and farmers with buyers and commercial opportunities.

In the agricultural sector, Kifiya creates a unified profile for each farmer, enabling banks, insurers, input suppliers, and buyers to access comprehensive data. This approach allows farmers to access credit, insurance, inputs, mechanisation, advice, and buyers through a single platform. To date, Kifiya's infrastructure has supported over US$1 billion in credit.

The IFC investment, announced at the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, Angola, will bolster Kifiya's agricultural data and risk models and extend its reach to rural communities, connecting smallholder farmers and microenterprises with finance and markets. Munir Duri, founder and CEO of Kifiya, stated, 'Our purpose is to make Africa’s invisible economy investable. Farmers and microenterprises already produce, trade, and create value, but much of that activity remains unseen by formal finance.'

This investment builds on an existing partnership between Kifiya and the IFC. A project launched in 2025 to digitally profile one million Ethiopian farmers has now exceeded its target, profiling over 1.2 million farmers. The IFC featured Kifiya as a case study in its 2026 Cracking the Credit Code report.