The audience that is targeted consists of farmers and Agri-SMEs across agridultural value chains, with Kenya as a pilot country.
The tagline of AGRIFINANCING.COM is “connect to 100+ lenders”. As such, the hugely fragmented landscape of financiers is addressed by bringing them onto the platform. But that is not enough. Most emerging entrepreneurs (especially those located in rural areas) are not well versed in finance and need to be guided towards those financiers that are relevant to their credit needs and the state (maturity) of their company. To this extent, an algorithm will be developed called Malengo (Swahili for targets). Through 8-10 questions, lenders that are in scope will be selected from the pre-registered pool of Commercial Banks, MFIs, SACCOs, Funds, FinCos, Crowd etc. In addition the platform will educate on agri-entrepreneurship and finance, and will create a vibrant community that includes hundreds of Business Development Service providers (BDS).
In this section we shall explain the link to Cardano.
Dapp, Defi, blockchain, insurance, digital identity or smart-contracts will one day help small businesses to access credit at scale - but this will still take a little time. Blockchain solutions need to be further developed. And African infrastructure must be improved: internet coverage, smartphone usage and especially the cost of web access are all critical factors that need to be solved.
There are - however - things that we can do today:
To contribute to the Cardano Africa mission and prepare the grounds for future crypto-based finance solutions, we shall help with building the brand in two ways:
(a) Sensitization
Build awareness of the workings, ideas and developments of crypto through weekly blog articles – with an emphasis on Cardano as the crypto of choice for Africa. To this extent, agrifinancing.com shall work closely together with a local media company that has 500,000 page hits per month (during Covid 1 mln+).
(b) NFT to raise additional funds
Generate additional revenue to build out and scale the AGRIFINANCING platform through creating an NFT market proposition under the brand AfricanFarmerz.
The ideas behind AGRIFINANCING and the MALENGO (algorithm) have been thought through by our team for over two years. Moving Frontiers is a leading Agri-finance consultant in East Africa; we understand the issues and maintain the relationships with financiers, investors and donors. Many references can be supplied.
But every proposition has risks. The ones that we see are:
- Lenders do not want to sign up
We shall not ask fees to partake in the platform; all we require is a curated and standardized lender template. Many lenders have already pledged support.
- Target audience
We shall not reach an audience of 100,000 followers in one year. That is a possibility, but we shall target to reach this numbers through collaboration with our media partner, influencers and SocMed specialists.
- The NFT platform will not generate additional funds
The agrifinancing platform will move to a more commercial footing in phase two (year 2-3). Revenue streams include advertising and matchmaking fees. In addition we think there’s a good change to attract donor interest once we can demonstrate proof-of-concept.
Funding from the NFT proposition would speed up things, but the success of the platform does not (!) hinge on meeting NFT revenue targets.
- Longer term sustainability
Eventually the platform should move to a commercial footing and become financially self-sustainable. However, once up and running, AGRIFINANCING can be maintained by the Moving Frontiers team on a very low-cost (subsidized) basis for the foreseeable future.