Vodacom M-kulima platform to register 6 million farmers

VODACOM Tanzania is projecting to register more than six million farmers by next year from 1.3 million currently through its M-Kulima digital platform to provide market linkages with buyers, processors and mechanisation.

Vodacom Tanzania’s Head of Sales IoT and Digital Platforms, Yvonne Bayona said in Kigali Rwanda over the weekend that Vodacom collaborated with the Ministry of Agriculture and Tanzania Fertiliser Regulatory Authority (TFRA) to achieve it.

“Agriculture is Tanzania’s economic backbone that employs more people than any other sector, thus it is Vodacom’s vision to support this growth through digital technology by improving the flow of market information,” she said at a panel discussion during GSMA’s MWC Africa 2022.

Apart from providing market linkages with buyers, processors and mechanisation, M-Kulima also links farmers with services like insurance, payments and loans, production, food security, inclusiveness and resilience to climate change.

Ms Bayona added that Vodacom together with GSMA’s research team has spent some time on the ground and realised there are challenges in the agriculture sector that can be sorted with the help of technology.

Some of the challenges are lack of access to financial services, market linkage and lack of real-time data as well as limited access to markets.

“Technology presents Vodacom with a unique opportunity to serve a new segment which accounts for about 70 per cent of the population,” she noted.

She said Vodacom Tanzania encourages farmers to prioritise receiving payments via mobile money to create individual farmer digital economic IDs which will enable smallholder farmers to access financial services.

The digital payments done through M-Pesa will reduce operational costs for agribusinesses, whilst increasing security, efficiency and visibility for the government.

Speaking of Vodacom’s achievement as part of GSMA’s AgriTech, Ms Bayona said between January and September this year more than 120,000 farmers have had access to credit of around 8bn/-through its overdraft service dubbed ‘Songesha’.

Furthermore, about 25,000 farmers have made use of the saving and deposit services of M-Koba and M-Pawa depositing over 5bn/-.

“We have also paid 11,000 farmers around 4bn/-and have created a more holistic end-to-end solution that allows easy integration with agri-partners and other agriculture stakeholders like TFRA and Insurance company Acre Africa,” she said.

She said Vodacom envisions rolling out its network to the most remote parts of the country to digitalise the entire agriculture ecosystem and allow multiple players to offer services in the sector.

“To transform farmers from subsistence farming to commercial farming as well as ensure food security, emerging technologies must be integrated with Agriculture.