The Independent Uganda: You get the Truth we Pay the Price
Kampala, Uganda | THE INDEPENDENT | Small scale farmers across Uganda can now access a digital platform for market, inputs and buyers of their produce thanks to a new partnership between Financial services firm MasterCard and US African Development Foundation (USADF).
USADF, a United States government Africa agency, will work with a local partner Uganda Development Trust (UDET) which has to identify farmer cooperatives to participate in the MasterCard pilot project.
The farmers will be connected to the MasterCard Farmers Network that will give them access to farming information. Their data would be collected which can be presented to funders for loans.
When the farmers have produced, they feed information into the platform which can be seen by the market buyer who would ultimately contact them. The agents offer a price and if a farmer accepts, they transfer funds through mobile money and bank transfers, before they can pick the produce.
Salah Goss, the head of MasterCard Labs, told reporters in Kampala on Wednesday that the platform is an aggregation point for smallholder farmers.
“It is a mobile marketplace for farmers. A farmer can choose to respond to an offer or not. Farmers have been walking miles to take their goods to the market.” She said the platform would make agents who want to buy their produce go for it at the farmer’s place.
The platform enables buyers to access information about the availability and quantity of produce immediately after harvest. The farmers, on the other hand, will have real-time price information on their produce.
The platform was developed by the MasterCard Labs for Financial Inclusion and is supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The platform is already in use in Kenya where it started in 2017 as 2Kuze (we grow). Tens of farmers have since been added to the platform.
In Uganda, according to C.D Glin, the USADF CEO, they have up to USD 2 million (7.3 billion Shillings) annually in grant to be given to farmers in the cooperatives. This money would be used to give individual farmers soft loans. Already, they are working with Kayonza tea farmers in Kanungu district.
Ugandan farmers face a myriad of issues with market and finance being some of them. Changing climate and limited knowledge on better farming practices all but compound them to low productivity.
MasterCard says they will gather expertise to guide farmers through some of these challenges. The pilot will be evaluated after a year to determine its success. The USADF invests directly in community enterprises by proving seed capital.
*****
URN
