Agridex Foundation launches zero-fee payments for charitable organisations moving money into Africa
The Agridex Foundation has announced a new commitment to provide qualifying charitable and development organisations with zero platform and transaction fees when moving money into Africa. The initiative aims to address the hidden costs, delays and lack of traceability that can reduce the funding reaching programmes and communities on the ground.
The commitment accompanies the release of “The Price of Giving“, a new Agridex Foundation paper examining the fees, foreign-exchange costs, delays, banking barriers and compliance burdens associated with moving charitable and development funding into Africa.
The numbers
“Africa is the most expensive place on earth to send money,” says Agridex CEO and founder, Henry Duckworth. In the first quarter of 2025, sending $200 into the region cost an average of 8.78% of the amount sent, against a global average of 6.49%. The global average itself is more than double the UN Sustainable Development Goal of 3%.
“Consider a funder sending a $1 million grant to an implementing partner in South Africa in batches,” says Duckworth. “On the traditional banking route, it means that roughly $950,000 arrives, with delays of days and occasionally months. The difference of $50,000 on a single grant is a clinic’s annual drug supply, or a school’s entire teaching staff for a year.”
Multiply those numbers, and a funder disbursing $20 million a year into the region on traditional rails is surrendering somewhere between half a million dollars and one million dollars annually to the mechanics of moving it, enough to fund an entire additional programme. If even a conservative 5% of the $100 billion entering Africa each year for good is consumed by the mechanics of moving it, more than $5 billion a year is not going to the programmes it was intended for.
“Five percent of $100 billion equates to a third of the economy of Malawi being lost,” says Duckworth. “These are large numbers intended for development and programmes on the ground but are disappearing into fees, delays and inefficiencies.
“Africa pays the world’s most punitive prices to receive money and the organisations doing the most difficult work in the region face the highest barriers to a bank account, and the burden of proving that funds arrived intact has itself become one of the sector’s most significant costs,” he says.
Safe, affordable and instant alternative payment infrastructure exists
Agridex argues that these costs are not an unavoidable feature of international aid, but a problem of outdated financial infrastructure that can be addressed with modern payment technology.
“On the positive side, the infrastructure required to move money instantly, cheaply and verifiably now exists,” continues Duckworth. “The question is whether the development sector is prepared to use it.”
Built by farmers for farmers
Duckworth himself is the son of a farmer from Zimbabwe and set up Agridex as a digital marketplace for the people who feed the world. It removes the structural barriers to international trade, regardless of farm size, so there are no minimum transaction volumes on the platform. Any farmer with a product to sell and an internet connection can reach verified international buyers and receive payment directly. Agridex currently has verified buyers in 34 countries.
Farmers receive payment when a trade completes removing the financial gap between completing a sale and receiving the proceeds – a huge benefit for smallholders and cooperatives operating on tighter margins. Pricing reflects genuine international demand with no agents taking a margin between the farmer and the end buyer.
A commitment to zero-fee payments
The Agridex Foundation has made a commitment to provide payments into Africa for qualifying charitable and development organisations with zero platform and transaction fees, with no volume cap or time limit on the commitment.
Where currency conversion is required, Agridex says its pricing will never exceed 1% over the interbank spot rate and will typically range between 0.2% and 0.5%. The live interbank benchmark will be published alongside every transaction, allowing organisations to see and verify the cost of each payment.
Eligible organisations will also receive same-day settlement into local currency, mobile money or bank accounts, together with a complete, independently verifiable record of each transfer from source to endpoint. Funds leave the platform only to verified accounts, while participants undergo sanctions and money-laundering screening as part of the onboarding process.
The initiative is open to registered charities, NGOs and not-for-profit development organisations sending funds into African markets served by Agridex.
