Mobile payments: How digital finance is transforming agriculture
This report (PDF) by The Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) offers new and interesting insights on the role that digital finance can play in providing a more cost-effective and secure method for financial transactions in the agricultural sector, particularly for rural smallholder farms. In doing so, it offers a three-step approach for digital financed-based business development that emphasizes deep engagement with smallholder farmers, innovative partnership strategies, and a focus on mutual value creation. Complementing these recommendations, the initiatives profiled in this report offer compelling cases of how three different organisations approached the agri-digital finance opportunity and the solutions they crafted to successfully reach smallholder farmers. The study was carried out using three case studies; SmartMoney from Uganda, NWK Agri-Services from Zambia, and Rice Mobile Finance (RiMFin) from Ghana. The report introduces the concept of digital finance by providing an overview of the new technologies and business models that began only seven years ago. The report’s findings provide an insight that portrays the nascent usage of digital payments by users ranging from large agricultural commodity buyers to the small-scale farmers at the bottom of the pyramid.