Smallholder farming is a challenging enterprise. There are around 500 million smallholder farmers in the world, and they produce up to 80% of the food consumed in Africa and Asia.
Yet they are among the poorest and most food insecure in the world and on the frontline of dealing with the impacts of climate change. Smallholder farmers therefore play a critical role in addressing the challenges of food security, poverty and climate change.
GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains
The GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains aims to scale digital solutions for the agricultural last mile and improve smallholders’ financial inclusion, livelihood and climate resilience by investing in organisations procuring from smallholders living on less than USD 2 per day.
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The AgiTech Fund has grant funding for eight £220,000 investments to support projects for 24 months, plus in-kind support and consultations to assist with business plans, market research, user-centric design, business intelligence, and user-testing with agribusiness staff and smallholders. It will focus on two areas of agriculutre technology innovation:
Mobile Money for Smallholder Farmers
Mobile money providers in partnership with AgriTech vendors who are developing, implementing, launching and/or scaling enterprise services (B2B2C) which digitise the agricultural last mile procurement and communication with smallholders should apply with proposed enterprise services that include digitizing the following primary use-cases:
- Procurement records and smallholder farmer profiles (static and dynamic information);
- Payments to smallholder farmers via mobile money;
- Communication and providing advisory services for smallholder farmers.
Data Services for Smallholder Farmers
AgriTech organisations who have already scaled a last mile agriculture digitisation service and established a model for generating digital farmer records and explored linking farmer records with financial service providers should apply with a proposed evolution of these services that include digitizing the following primary use-cases:
- Procurement records and smallholder farmer profiles (static and dynamic information) at a scale of at least 50,000 farmers in the proposed market;
- Using existing deployment data and digital records of smallholder farmers to provide financial inclusion services through partnerships with third-party organisations;
- Communication and providing advisory services for smallholder farmers.
Apply Now: Deadline is July 31, 2019
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