FarmPal

70 percent of Africans are smallholder farmers, yet, it is extremely challenging for them to access finance through the mainstream financial institutions such as banks.

FarmPal (www.farmpalrw.com), is an online marketplace, where users can micro-invest in farming projects of their choice, empower farmers, while earning a profit after harvest.

The much needed capital help farmers to utilize modern agricultural technologies and practices for a climate smart Agriculture, improve yield and land productivity, consequently improving food security and livelihood in farming communities around the continent.

70 percent of Africans are small scale farmers. They need access to quality inputs, labor, modern technologies, and so on, to improve their yield, land productivity, resilience,  and their competitiveness on the market. Yet, mainstream financial institutions, such as banks, have long ignored them leaving them in a vicious cycle of poverty.

Despite Africa possessing around 60 percent of global arable land, the above has left African farmers practicing subsistence farming for centuries, leaving Africa with the highest levels of Malnutrition, food insecurity, and poverty.

At FarmPal, we believe it is high time to make African Agriculture attractive and competitive on the global scale for a greater good.

On farmpalrw.com, the user will find a range of Agricultural projects from different farmers accompanied with all the key details. The user will then choose whichever project they want to sponsor, choose how much stake they want to have in that project, and invest.
We will take all the necessary details of the user and update him/her on the progress of the project every month until harvest. They can also choose to visit the farms where they will have an opportunity to interact with farmers and have first hand experience on the progress of the project and farming in general.

Once the farmer has sold the produce, the user ( investor or sponsor in this case), will decide whether s/he wants to continue with the project or wants to pull out his initial capital plus interests share.

We try to minimize all the risks by providing technical trainings to the farmers and putting an insurance cover to the agricultural projects.

We are targeting smallholder farmers operating on 1Ha or less.

We are helping them form cooperatives through land consolidation which make communication easier and our operations a bit more efficient.

We communicate with our farmers on a regular basis to exchange ideas and get feedback on how we can improve our services to serve them better.

Indirectly, we are also targeting urban people, providing them with micro-investment opportunities in Agriculture.

Through our online marketplace, users are able to micro-invest in farming projects of small holders, therefore providing them with much needed capital for their farming ventures. The acquire capital will help farmers access quality inputs, labor,and  modern technologies to improve their yield, productivity, and livelihood.

Traditionally, banks have been the official sources of finance but they have failed to cater for Agriculture. Family and friends are the alternative, but their resources are limited.

Our solution uses crowdsourcing technology into African farming where decision making process of what and who to fund is in the hands of the public containing different individuals using different criteria. With this kind of model, and provided that the internet is global, the possibilities are limitless.

We are using crowdsourcing technology to to transform the way farmers access finance.

Crowdsourcing technology is already used in IT for ideas and as crowdfunding in other sectors. The most common examples for crowdfunding would be Indiegogo, Kickstarter, etc.

We have brought the model into agriculture to serve the unserved.

In agriculture, like in other businesses, your inputs will be positively correlated with your outputs. Input in this case will be your fertilizers, pesticides, Water, labor, and so on. Once these are lacking, it will be reflected in the output, in this case, the harvest.

Input means capital, be it in financial or resources terms. Smallholder farmers tend to have neither of these. This results in poor agricultural performance affecting the greater society.

With the smallholder farmers we work with, yield have increased double fold on average as our technology and business model get them access to vital inputs for their businesses.

Currently we are serving 50 farmers.

In a year, we will be serving 150 farmers.

In five years we will be serving 1000 farmers.

The next year, our goal is to start taking our solution to other regions of Rwanda working with different crops depending on their performance in the regions and their impact on food security.

In five years, we want to scale our solution to the region within Eat-Africa and ready to roll out to the rest of Africa.

1. Financial barriers to recruit skilled staff and conduct our operations.

2. Cultural barriers and technologies operating on internet are still new to people in Africa.

3. Technological, as internet banking has not well penetrated in Africa yet. People who are interested in our opportunities are still finding it hard to participate remotely. 

1. We are seeking investment to help us in our operations and scale.

2. We have started an aggressive campaign on social media and other local platforms to get people to understand and use our services.

3. We are using local payment services such as Mobile money.

Full time: 6

Part time: 10

We have a strong and diverse team ranging from Agronomists, Financial experts, Marketing experts, to software engineers.

CEO & Founder : Materne Mateso has seven years experience in Agriculture industry in Rwanda both in field and managerial levels.

CTO: Emeline Kwizera has five years experience in managing software development projects and cyber security.

Software programmer: Jordy Bastian has experience in different programming languages ( Javascript, Python, PhP,...)

Marketing: Joyce Rudaseswa  is a marketing manager with skills in digital marketing.

Finance and accounting: Steven Kwizera has a great background in accounting auditing, and financial management.

Lawyer: Jeanette Ishimwe is a corporate lawyer with more than two years of experience with successful local companies.

We have a simple business model where we take 20 percent of the profit generated by the projects we have worked with.

The farmer will get 40 percent and the investors( Sponsors) will get the remaining 40 percent.

1. Mentorship to further improve and scale up our solution

2. Funding and connections to funding opportunities

3. Be part of Solve's network of entrepreneurs, a rich platform for sharing ideas, challenges, and opportunities.

4. To increase visibility for our solution

We need partners with expertise and working in the same line of industry that would bring value to our company in terms of mentorship, advisory, visibility, funding, and so on.

Refugees are are also some of our  target market as we develop business plans that would have them involved in farming .

Refugees just like small scale farmers are ignored members of societies in many areas. Involving them in economic activities such as farming through our model would bring economic socio-empowerment to their communities.