By Antynet Ford

FarmBizAfrica Chief Executive Officer Jethro Tieman has been named in the Forbes 30 Under 30 for 2026 for his achievements in building FarmBizAfrica’s information ecosystem business.

On congratulating Jethro, Forbes said: “We have received thousands of nominations – your achievements recognized by our editors and expert industry judges now place you in the world’s most impactful community of young entrepreneurs and game changers. This list includes innovators like Mark Zuckerberg, Donald Glover, Malala Yousafzai, Daniel EK, Rihanna and now you.”.

The CEO was selected as one of Europe’s 30 social enterprise entrepreneurs under 30, in what has become one of the most competitive recognition programmes in the business world. 

Jethro, who grew up in Nairobi as a pupil at the International School of Kenya and then Braeburn Garden Estate, co-founded FarmBizAfrica as a teenager, working with his mother, journalist Jenny Luesby, to develop what was then the first news website for smallholders in Africa. 

Both were told repeatedly that farmers would never get farming information from the internet, yet FarmBizAfrica went on to become the largest farming news site in Africa, winning 17 media awards, including from the United Nations and the East African Community, and inspiring a new genre of smallholder media.

The co-founders supported the service as a passion project until 2024, when Jethro redrew its blueprint to develop its more than 4,000 farmer case studies and banks of agricultural surveys and data as a knowledge centre and technological ecosystem.

As an IT and AI expert, Jethro has created a proprietary vibing platform, unique meeting tools, and a host of other technical innovations, with the next two tech tools for farmers launching during April 2026,  joining the centre’s Data Lab, agronomic support tool, HarvestMAX, and commercial pilots creating a free training school for farmers as a virtual, interactive demo farm.

“Combining AI with my other passion of farming can see me disappear into banks of computers for days,” said Jethro, “but with the sector so fragmented, it has felt like a miracle of timing to be able to start connecting and empowering farmers in so many new ways.”

“The  reality on the ground in smallholdings can be so far removed from the cutting edge of information technology, but farmers have phones, and with phones, we can do so much more.”

“That said, I never dreamt this would take me to being a Forbes young entrepreneur. I am literally thrilled by the recognition from Forbes.”

FarmBizAfrica is additionally working closely with aggregators, exporters and processors on developing value chain services and market linkage, and partnering with other founders in the sector to deliver their agronomic tools to the platform’s over 3 million users a month across 7 channels.

“So many young founders are creating great tools, and then struggling to get them taken up, because they begin with no market reach. We didn’t build FarmBizAfrica from the start to bridge that gap, but once we had that reach, we realised it had positioned us to lead in bringing partners together to achieve more, and faster, in improving yields, carbon capture, incomes, and value chains.”

“Our place in African agriculture is now so clear, as the informer and connector.”