UrbanFarm Africa: E Squared Backs South Africa's All-Female Hydro-Coop Agritech Pilot

What if micro-farming could tackle youth unemployment and food insecurity at the same time? That's the bet behind UrbanFarm Africa, whose Hydro-Coop smart-farming system is at the heart of a new pilot in Diepsloot, Johannesburg — now backed by South African impact fund E Squared Investments.

South Africa's twin crises of joblessness and food insecurity are usually treated as separate policy problems, tackled by separate programmes. UrbanFarm Africa's model is interesting precisely because it refuses that separation, treating them as one problem with one answer: put productive, affordable farming technology directly into the hands of unemployed young people. It's a deceptively ambitious idea. Making it work requires not just clever hardware but training, market access and patient capital — which is why the involvement of an impact investor and a well-established community organisation matters as much as the technology itself.

What UrbanFarm Africa does

UrbanFarm Africa is a South African agritech firm behind the Hydro-Coop — a compact, solar-powered system that combines poultry farming with hydroponic vegetable production in a single unit. Designed for urban, rural and remote areas with limited infrastructure, the units use significantly less water than traditional farming and can run off-grid. The company says it has implemented 271 projects and helped generate around R250 million in revenue over five years.

The Diepsloot pilot

The Green Acres Hydro-Coop programme is based at Afrika Tikkun's Green Acres Farm in Diepsloot and currently includes 20 participants — 19 young women and one young man with a disability. The almost entirely female cohort is deliberate. As Afrika Tikkun Group CEO Marc Lubner has noted, women in South Africa face disproportionately higher unemployment and significantly lower access to startup capital; centring the pilot on women is a direct attempt to close that "gender gap" in entrepreneurship.

Inside the deal

E Squared Investments, a South African impact fund, is backing the pilot as a model that pairs commercial micro-enterprise with social impact. The programme launched in February 2026, and Afrika Tikkun plans to introduce a second cohort of 20 participants in 2027 as part of broader plans to expand the model into more communities across South Africa. The intent is a repeatable blueprint — not a one-off grant.

Why it matters

South Africa carries one of the world's highest youth-unemployment rates, and food insecurity remains stubborn even in urban centres. UrbanFarm Africa's approach — turning unemployed young people, especially women, into micro-farming entrepreneurs with affordable, off-grid technology — addresses both at once. Backing from an impact investor like E Squared shows how patient, mission-aligned capital is being used to test scalable solutions to the continent's toughest social challenges.

Farming as a jobs engine

South Africa's youth-unemployment rate is among the highest in the world, and it falls hardest on young women, who also have far less access to startup capital. Conventional job-creation schemes rarely reach the townships and informal settlements where the need is greatest. UrbanFarm Africa's model reframes agriculture as an entry point to entrepreneurship: give a young person an affordable, off-grid Hydro-Coop that produces both eggs and vegetables, add training and a route to market, and you create a micro-business rather than a temporary job. Combining poultry with hydroponics in one solar-powered unit means two revenue streams from a small footprint — important where land and infrastructure are scarce.

What to watch next

The Diepsloot pilot is deliberately small — 20 participants — because the real question is repeatability. Can the model be standardised, financed and rolled out cohort after cohort, community after community, without losing its impact? Afrika Tikkun's plan to add another 20 participants in 2027 and expand further will be the first test of that. Backing from E Squared Investments matters here because patient, impact-focused capital is willing to fund the unglamorous work of proving a model before scaling it. If the Hydro-Coop approach holds up, it could offer a genuinely scalable answer to two of South Africa's most stubborn problems at once: joblessness and food insecurity.

Details as disclosed via Launch Base Africa, Bizcommunity and public announcements, 2026. Figures are as reported; ZAR figures are as stated by the company.