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Issue 003 - Driving Active Use 

Welcome!

The AgriFin Update is Mercy Corps AgriFin’s periodic newsletter highlighting our recent learnings, insights, publications and other activities, including links to our favourite resources from other actors in digitally-enabled services for smallholder farmers. For more information, please visit our website (www.mercycorpsafa.org) or join us on Twitter.

Recent AgriFin Highlights:

From traditional classroom learning to household tablet learning: The Smallholders’ Capacity Building Solution?

The growing penetration of digital technology in Tanzania is reaching even low-income populations, providing access to individuals who were previously excluded from digital financial services such as payments, savings, loans and insurance. AFA collaborated with Fundación Capital, Rungwe Smallholder Tea Growers Association (RSTGA) and CRDB Bank, to develop and pilot a tablet-based learning application called Jijenge. The Pilot revealed that compared to traditional training methodologies, innovative digital solutions such as Jijenge offer unprecedented opportunities for reaching smallholder farmers at scale to promote digital financial inclusion. Read the full report here.


Building the DigiFarm Innovation Platform – The Journey to One Million Farmers 

DigiFarm is an integrated mobile-based platform that provides access to key services for smallholders, including high quality, affrodable inputs, digital input credit and insurance, e-learning and linkages to market. AgriFin Accelerate (AFA) has supported the development and expansion of digital products and services to 1 million smallholder farmers (SHF) over the course of the six years, with the outreach targeting 50% women. The program’s key objective is to raise farmer income and productivity by at least 50%. The program supported the DigiFarm journey, as an innovation partner farmer-centric product development, business modeling, partnership support and impact measurement. Read the story and access the full case study of this journey here.  


Marketing Agriculture Micro-Insurance through Rural Social Networks:

A recent review of AFA’s multiple activities showed that young farmers face tighter constraints than older adults and have greater difficulty accessing land, financing, practical skills, markets, inputs, and input-specific extension services. The challenges are more acute for young women farmers, who are even less likely to control resources, be able to engage in lucrative value chains, or exercise autonomy. However, there are strategic opportunities for youth in agriculture and value addition / business opportunities. Read the full case study here.


Climate-smart Agriculture: Solar Powered Pumps Empower Women Farmers:

The youth market in agriculture is dynamic and growing, but not homogenous. Through segmentation, digital services can capture the vast array of market opportunities to boost both active adoption and the broader success rates. AFA interviewed 23 young farmers across 10 villages in two Kenyan counties to more fully understand their financial and agricultural portfolios, needs, and outlooks - identifying four persona categories. Read the full case study here.


Quick Wins for Digital Agriculture: Why Digitizing Aggregation Centres is a Fast Path to Long-Term Impact for Smallholders

Over the past two years, FtMA (supported by MercyCorps’ AgriFin Accelerate program and the World Food Programme’s Innovation Accelerator) has developed a digital platform, consisting of a mobile app, SMS gateway and web portal. The platform aims to boost both programs’ efficiency and scale, and increase the number of products and services offered to farmers by local private sector actors. The FtMA pilot generated important learnings around the development of digital architecture and the potential benefits for farmer organizations and all other ecosystem players. Find out more here.


Driving Active Use in a Digital World - 2019 Annual Learning Event
This year's Annual Learning Event brought together 320 participants from 200 organizations around the globe and enabled us to learn from each other, map courses to identify opportunities and tackle challenges to scale and reach more small holder farmers with digital financial solutions. Read the session summaries and recap on the day's activities, here.


On Our Reading List:

$4.9 Trillion Small Business Credit Gap: Digital Models to the Rescue
Digital technologies are now enabling new business models that are better placed to respond to the unmet global market opportunity for MSME credit, which is estimated to be half of the $8 trillion industry. This blog and deck from CGAP highlights some of the most interesting companies and the emerging business model innovations potentially disrupting each link in the agriculture value chain. 

RAFLL Data Analytics Animation Video
Research from the RAF Learning Lab in partnership with the Global Development Incubator and Dalberg Advisors, and support from the Mastercard Foundation suggests data analytics could be the game changer we need to unlock capital for smallholder agriculture. Through progressive partnerships between financial service providers and digital service providers, and support from donors, the sector can work towards unlocking the full potential of data analytics. Watch the Lab’s full video to learn more.
Copyright © 2019 Mercy Corps AgriFin, All rights reserved.


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