Our partnership with Association of Women in Agriculture in Kenya (AWAK) has received funding from the Rabo Foundation and the Swiss Capacity Building Facility (SCBF) to support more smallholders grow their businesses in Kenya.
This extended partnership between AWAK and hiveonline will leverage and extend the myCoop.online platform to provide market and credit access to smallholder women farmers in Kenya and will reach an additional 40,000 Kenyan women smallholder farmers (totalling 41,250 in approximately 1,600 households). This will be in addition to the 1,250 women expected to be onboarded in the initial rollout.
The populations targeted in this extension will include:
- 40,000 Farmers across five different counties in Kenya – Nairobi, Kitui, Mombasa, Tharaka Nithi, and Kakamega
- 80% women
- 30% of Youth farmers (18-35 Years)
- People with disabilities
Impact
With this expansion, women, and girls in urban and peri-urban communities will be able to access formal financing to grow their businesses, implement best agricultural practices, and create market efficiencies to ensure their crops are sold. It will increase both the yields of women farmers and the proportion of revenue that goes to women and girls, creating a stronger financial base and allowing them to give back to the community, resulting in more sustainable environments. This will result in job creation and improved farming techniques.
About AWAK
The Association of Women in Agriculture in Kenya(AWAK) focuses on women and girls who need to build financial resilience, many of whom are slum dwellers who have lost their jobs as a result of COVID-19-related economic disruption and women in rural areas overall, by assisting them in establishing small farms. The use of best agricultural practices enables them to grow more crops sustainably while meeting the quality requirements of commercial markets.
About myCoop
The myCoop.online platform from hiveonline provides seamless farming association management tools to support the operations and transactions of cooperatives and associations. As production plans and transactions are recorded in the app, individual users and groups develop a financial history and reputation that can be shared with financial institutions and supply chain actors.
Over time, the accuracy of forecasts and repayment of loans within the group, as well as other commercial activities, demonstrate the reliability and creditworthiness of the members and groups. By helping smallholders to access wider markets and capital to invest, the platform helps farming groups to grow their income and scale
About Swiss Capacity Building Fund (SCBF)
SCBF is a public-private development partnership (PPDP) that funds technical assistance (TA) for financial sector partners to develop and scale-up client-centred financial products, channels, and services in developing and emerging countries. The financial products and services include savings, loans, insurance, digital financial services, and financial education, among others.
About Rabo Foundation
Rabo Foundation invests in the self-sufficiency of farmer organizations in Africa, Asia and Latin America, by putting up finance and by sharing the cooperative, banking and agricultural expertise that the Rabobank Group has built up over many years. This helps organizations to achieve their goals of offering smallholder farmers access to financing, savings opportunities, knowledge and new markets.
In addition, new technological developments can be deployed to help serve our target group – smallholder farmers – even more effectively. Digitization is therefore a key focus for Rabo Foundation and consists of a combination of four data streams: field information from the farmer, chain information, geodata and the use of fintech such as a mobile savings account and credit scoring. To realize this, Rabo Foundation supports AgTech and FinTech organizations.
You Can Get Involved
We are on a mission to create sustainable digital finance for the next billion people, and we need your help. If you are an MFI, bank, or commercial partner interested in working with agricultural cooperatives and associations, please request a demo with us here.