Twiga Foods partners with Google to tap Cloud services in addressing food security

The partnership will help Twiga in running an efficient food value chain that connects farmers directly with vendors and allow more accurate ordering of food items, which will lead to the reduction of waste of perishable goods during the distribution process.

Google Cloud Africa Director  Niral Patel on Tuesday said this will lead to the reduction in waste of perishable goods during the food startup's distribution process.

"The work we are doing with Twiga Foods is not just about an e-commerce platform choosing a cloud provider to run its systems and store data. It also is about showing how technology and the power of AI and machine learning can help a nation address sustainability challenges head on such as waste reduction and food security," Patel said.

"Twiga Foods is a pioneering company that is looking at some of the most pressing issues we have in Africa and bringing in technology to come up with viable, long term sustainable solutions that can make a difference in people's lives."

Twiga's Chief Technology Officer Caine Wanjau on his part termed the use of technology as a benefit for not just the company, but also farmers.

"Shop owners can now dedicate their time to growing their business and spending time with their families, rather than spend hours every day procuring and stocking up products. Farmers get a fair chance at earning decent incomes and being paid adequately for their products. This is all being enabled by bringing in technology to help us look at our business and customers in a profound manner, relying on data in real-time to make the best and smartest decisions for our people and the country," said Wanjau.

Twiga, which was recently featured on TIME Magazine’s 2022 list of ‘100 most influential companies’, established its core IT infrastructure on Google Cloud when its customer base began growing exponentially in 2015.

The company says it began to store all of its business and operational data securely on Google Cloud using the Big Query data warehousing product, which in turn led to the transformation from a manually driven company to a technology-enabled business that relies on artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools to make smart business decisions in real time.

Twiga claims to have over 100,000 registered customers and delivers to 10,000 clients daily. It also boasts of 700 employees and has a network of over 8,000 farmers.