Afro Agro-Tech

The prize funding will assist us to continue and finish the development of a mobile application for use by rural smallholder farmers and other stakeholders within our solution. The mobile application is tailor made for use even by the illiterate rural smallholder farmers, buy assisting them to detect pest and diseases in their fields and get direct access to agronomists' services, while on the other hand experts and contracting organizations can remotely monitor field activities such as land preparation, planting, irrigation, crop performance and harvesting in near to real time using the same mobile application. Rural smallholder farmers are often left behind with regards to digitalization and use of technology, the prize funding will assist us change that narrative through our digital inclusive approach.

The support we will get by winning the prize will enhance our organization's leadership development through mentorship and guidance from experts. This will also give us an opportunity to meet, network and even socialize with other innovators, hence giving us the much needed exposure to grow our organization and expand our impact.      

My vision is to continue leveraging on technology to improve the lives of the poor and vulnerable members of our community, especially rural habitants (80% of all the people living in extreme poverty are in rural areas). This will see over 7 million rural smallholder farmers in Southern Africa capacitated far beyond ensuring mere food security status, but also becoming wealth generators through production and exporting of high value organic certified food produce and products.

As an organization, we will continue to champion collaborations and partnerships with other stakeholders for the benefit and betterment of all, including the often marginalized rural population. The ultimate goal is to see food, nutrition and income secure rural farming households through adoption of digital farming technologies

Poverty in Southern Africa is predominantly rural, 80% of all people living in extreme poverty are in rural areas. Nearly all habitants of rural areas depends on rain fed agriculture for livelihood, yet with the negative effects of climate change they are becoming food insecure, and this is creating new and other dimensions of poverty.

On the other hand, only 19% of people in the least developed countries use internet compared to over 87% in the developed world. In a world that is not just becoming digital, but has already become digital, this digital divide is further widening the gap between the rich and the poor.

Our organization works in partnerships and collaborations with other stakeholders involved in agriculture and technology to provide solutions that involves leveraging on technology, especially I.C.Ts to develop tailor made interventions to assist rural smallholder farmers with agronomic assistance services that helps with mitigatory measures to climate change, improvements of production and productivity. We also aim to attract the youths to consider farming as a viable career option, because currently the average age of an African farmer is 60 years, in a continent where over 60% of the population is under 24 years of age.

On average, a rural smallholder farmer in Southern Africa has access to 2 ha of land, but still unable to produce enough food (staple food maize), to feed his/her family of usually 6 members, this is primarily due to lack of technical skills to use good agronomic practices, worsened by the negative effects of climate change.

Our solution has proved that it can produce enough food to feed a family of 6 for the whole year from 1/16th of a ha.  The solution involves use of best agronomic practices, conservation farming using climate smart cropping processes, it is called the "Pfumvunza" farming concept. 

Over 3 million rural smallholder farmers were capacitated through the "Pfumvudza" farming concept. https://www.herald.co.zw/3m-fa...

In addition to ensuring food security, our solution also focuses on wealth creation by rural smallholder farmers through production of high value organic certified food crops for export. Over 7 000 rural smallholder farmers were organized into grower groups and clubs, trained on food handling processes and then vertically integrated into the supply chain of organizations such as Krauter Mix (Germany food processing company) and Botanica Natural Products (South African food processing company). https://botanica.africa/moring...

First and foremost, we start by undertaking a baseline study when we get into an area, to determine peoples needs, available resources and services, to come up with a well informed strategic plan for our intervention.

Hunger, poverty, and climate change has been the major challenges being faced by rural communities. We organize the rural farmers into grower groups and clubs to enable their capacitation through trainings on climate smart interventions such as the "pfumvunza" farming concept and conservation organic farming. This ensures rural smallholder farmers become not only food secure, but have surplus and earn income. 

   We also partner with organizations like Organopack to enable the rural smallholder farmers to export their high value organic products eg to Kuli Kuli in the U.S.A and Martin Bauer in Germany. This ensures that they earn foreign currency and become wealth generators.