By Bob Aston
The second day of the Continental Briefing during the Fin4Ag Conference: revolutionising finance for agri-value chains, which is taking place at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, provided participants an opportunity to deliberate on building data collection as farmer organization services.
“Success comes through sustainable
poverty reduction. Farming is the best way of raising [the] economic
livelihoods of people,” said Mr. Chikava.
The second day of the Continental Briefing during the Fin4Ag Conference: revolutionising finance for agri-value chains, which is taking place at the Kenya School of Monetary Studies, provided participants an opportunity to deliberate on building data collection as farmer organization services.
The Session 4 on Building data collection as farmer organisation services was
chaired by Philip Kiriro, President of the Eastern Africa Farmers
Federation (EAFF), saw
participants go through three case studies.
Mahamadou Oudraogo from ROPPA took participants
through their experience in data collection. He gave a regional review of
family farms in West Africa, adding that they are determined to improve the
livelihoods of family farmers and also influencing policy at the national
level.
He said they are using tools like
questionnaires to collect data, which is also linked to the capacity of farmer
organisations. Currently ROPPA covers the five countries in the Economic
Community of West African States (ECOWAS).
The importance of local information
to international business trade also came up as Enock Chikava from BUNGE Senwes
International (BSI) informed participants that they have been promoting
inclusive finance models for farmers in Africa.
He emphasised the importance of local
information to international trade citing the case of Tanzania where they have
partnered with different stakeholders to initiate maize value chain.
Esther Muiruri from Equity bank addressing participants |
He said BSI believes that farmers
have the ability of being equal partners when they are financially empowered.
He said the importance of data to give access to agricultural insurance to
small-scale farmers cannot be over emphasised as it plays an important role
when farmers want to access credit facilities.
He said international traders value, critical
mass, supply and demand, proximity to cross –border markets, logistics and
infrastructure and political economy.
Agrotosh Mookerje, Principal Actuary
at MicroEnsure, looked at the importance data to open up agricultural insurance
to small-scale farmers. He touched on how agriculture insurance works, data
requirements for agriculture insurance and the role of different stakeholders.
He said that MicroEnsure has been a
provider of insurance to the low and middle-income market with more than 10
million active clients in 13 markets across Africa, Asia and the Caribbean.
He added that they have been
providing a range of life, health, property and weather-index products via a
range of distribution partners that include microfinance companies, banks,
co-operatives and mobile network operators.
Mookerje said that they have insured
close to 60,000 farmers in five (5) countries since 2013, namely Kenya, Malawi,
Rwanda, Tanzania and Zambia. He added that 5, 000 farmers have also received
payout.
MicroEnsure is currently offering
three (3) different types of insurance, namely indemnity insurance, weather
indexed insurance and area yield insurance.
Willian Ng’eno, Industrial
Partnerships Manager at YARA
Tanzania, shared information about one step program for small-holder farmers. He
said that they are mapping data for decision-making while also training farmers
on the best ways to use fertiliser.
“Data is crucial as it has to be
tailor made according to what the farmers want. We are building the capacity of
farmers to ensure that they are empowered and are able to access correct data,”
said Ng’eno.
The continental briefing was held to
address the challenges and opportunities in accessing financial services by
farmer’s organisations in Africa and identify profitable opportunities for farmers
engaging with finance actors.
No comments:
Post a Comment