Ethiopia's food system loses $9.6 billion every year. Not to drought. To a broken chain.
Ruit is the coordination and intelligence layer between field and plate.
Produce coordinated through platform
Live from platform operations
Fresh produce saved vs. FAO baseline
FAO 40% post-harvest loss baseline vs. live operations
Partners & Institutions
Built With the Institutions That Matter
Ruit is embedded in Ethiopia's national food and technology systems, not operating in isolation.
Partnership details available on request for institutional evaluation.
You are a tomato.
Planted in Tigray. Worth 100 birr to someone in Addis.
You will pass through four pairs of hands to get there.
Most of you won't make it.
Farm
Broker
Broker
Wholesale
Retail
Plate?
40%
never reaches a plate
15%
is all the farmer sees
4-6x
middlemen in between
Scroll to follow the chain
Asnakech
Smallholder Farmer, Tigray
The harvest is done. A broker is already waiting.
No price to reference. No alternative buyer. She sells immediately because she has no choice.
15%
of the final market price reaches Asnakech. The broker keeps the rest. (FAO)
The Chain
Broker Layers 1 and 2
Two more hands. No record. No accountability.
The produce changes hands twice before the city. No documentation. No tracking. Just extraction.
4-6x
middlemen between farmer and retailer, with zero price transparency at any layer
Abebe
Wholesaler, Addis Ababa Merkato
He controls the city's supply. He operates blind.
No supply forecast. No demand signal. Some days he has too much and produce rots. Some days he runs short and retailers leave empty.
0
data points available to Abebe before his daily price and procurement decisions
Sumeya
Retailer, Bole, Addis Ababa
3AM. Every morning. For years.
She drives 10km to wholesale in the dark not knowing the price or if the produce is even there. This is every day.
3AM
wakes up every morning
10KM
drives to market blind
0
price info before arrival
What if all three of them could see the chain?
Ruit replaces every broken handoff with a single coordination layer. Here is what changes.
Asnakech
Smallholder Farmer, Tigray
Confirmed buyer. Before the harvest.
Before
Sells to whoever shows up. Receives 15% of final price. No certainty.
With Ruit
Receives demand signal before harvest. Confirmed buyer. Earns more per kilogram through direct buyer connections.
+
More income for farmers through direct pricing, no broker extraction
The Chain
Coordinated Layers
Every kilogram has a destination before it moves.
Aggregators plugged into Ruit see supply arriving from farmers and demand from retailers. Fewer layers. Every handoff tracked.
90%
of each harvest delivered intact to retailers vs. 60% through the traditional chain
Abebe
Wholesaler, Addis Ababa Merkato
He now sees 40 days in both directions.
Supply arriving from farmer clusters. Retailer demand forecasted ahead. Abebe orders exactly the right amount. Nothing rots waiting for a buyer. Nobody goes short.
40
days of supply and demand visibility. In both directions.
Sumeya
Retailer, Bole, Addis Ababa
Ordered yesterday. From her phone. Delivered by 8AM.
She knows exactly what is arriving, when, and what it costs. No more 3AM drives. Her cost of goods is lower because fewer broker layers touched the produce.
8AM
delivery arrives at her shop
0KM
no market run needed
Full
price visibility before every order
5 in 10 never reach a plate
$9.6B
lost annually to post-harvest waste
Ethiopian CSA and FAO
30-50%
of produce lost before consumers
Ethiopia Min. of Agriculture
15%
of final price reaches the farmer
Ethiopian market chain research
15M
farming households with no demand data
Ethiopian CSA
This is not a drought. This is not a bad harvest. This is what a chain without intelligence does to the people inside it.
What if Asnakech, Abebe, and Sumeya could all see the whole chain?
That is what Ruit is.
IMPACT MEASUREMENT
We track what changes. From day one.
Methodology aligned to IRIS+ global standards and UN SDG 1, 8, and 12.
Kilograms coordinated through platform
IRIS+ PI4060
Average farm gate price premium
IRIS+ PI3122 vs. traditional chain
Average transit time reduction
Hours saved per shipment vs. baseline
Spoilage rate per coordinated shipment
IRIS+ PI2148: weight loss in transit
Methodology and data available on request for institutional due diligence.
Press & Recognition
Recognized by Those Who Shape Policy
Prime Minister, Ethiopia
Prime Minister looking at Ruit demo.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia reviewed Ruit's supply chain platform live, citing it as a flagship example of Ethiopia's AI-first agricultural transformation strategy.
ITU / UN AI for Good
Finalist: AI for Good Global Summit, Geneva.
Ruit was selected as one of 5 startup finalists to compete at the ITU AI for Good Global Summit in Geneva, recognised as a high-impact AI application addressing food security at national scale.
Next Capital
Featured as the Most Exciting Startup in Africa.
Next Capital highlighted Ruit as Africa's most exciting supply chain startup, citing our approach to eliminating extractive middlemen and using AI to rebuild Ethiopia's fresh produce coordination infrastructure.
Media inquiries: ruit.et@gmail.com
RUIT SYSTEMS
Field intelligence on Ethiopia's food system.
Read by people who shape food policy, fund food systems, and build what comes next.
Published when there is something worth saying. No noise.
Get In Touch
Partner With Ruit
Whether you are an investor, a development institution, a government body, or a researcher, we want to hear from you. Ruit is open to partnerships that move Ethiopia's food system forward.