UMOJALANDS PROJECT

Empowering smallholder farmers to become profitable, climate resilient, achieve optimum yields and have equal access to economic opportunities through innovative satellite-based e-extension, alternative credit scoring and blockchain based agri-stock exchange.

80% of Zimbabwe’s arable farmland is underutilised and this is because about 413000 rural small holder farmers (despite making the largest composition of those who feed our world and supporting over 8,6 million households in Zimbabwe only , have no access to formal financial institutions, owing to lack of recognisable collateral and limited information on their profiles which presents them as high risk, Financial service providers also face high resource constraints to develop, deploy and monitor products that best suit the needs of rural small holder farmers. Distance between rural farmers and Financial service providers also plays a pivotal role in discouraging financial inclusion for rural farmers. Because of this yields are declining, on average farmers are producing about 1,39 tonnes per hectare 82% short of the expected 5t, now the primary cause to this is the farmers use of legacy farming practices which is not backed by data as well as their lack of access to the latest climate smart information which inhibits ability to grow more and be profitable. Profitability is also becoming a distant ambition for our small scalers as they have to sell immediately after harvest when commodity prices are traditionally too low because of low demand to be able to payback money lender shylocks in time who despite their strict modus operandi are the best alternative available. Against this and because market information asymmetry they also sell through intermediaries who charge between 30% more meaning the produce will sell at barely 35% lower than the minimum support price hence farmers are left with nothing.

To propel our vision of a well empowered small-holder farmer who is profitable, climate resilient, achieves optimum production and has a fair access to economic opportunities we have come up with a solution, an inclusive digital ecosystem that is powered by 3 flagship products which are accessible via USSD, Mobile and Web Platforms

These are as follows

E-financial service is a data driven platform that uses alternative credit scoring to reduce the risk of lending to undercollaterised underbanked farmers, with a machine learning capability of telling into future lending behaviors through our well-done and structured personality tests , we bundle this together with AgronomyBox ,a platform that uses satellite data to convert soil, crop and climate information into actionable insights which Lenders & Insurers can also use for remote risk and loan management, it also works as an e-extension delivery tool which can be used by the agronomists and extension agents to give custom advice to our small-holder farmers, we cannot ignore the effects climate change has had on extension service delivery, traditional means can only work with the aid of technology. The last one within this ecosystem is the Farmland Commodity Exchange Marketplace which gives a chance to youthful farmers whom despite their passion for agriculture have no access to farmland an opportunity to own land digitally through investing in highly productive farms and holding an NFT as a store of value, This also features a commodity trading platform with warehouse receipt capability aimed at giving equal access to opportunities especially to small holder farmers who can trade on the platform and get maximum profit for their produce by simply holding produce in a warehouse and selling when its best profitable for them without the need to engage price distorting intermediaries.

Farmers - Primary Target market whom we want to capacitate through our services 

Lenders (Microfinances, Insurers, Lending Houses, )- Secondary , they are the ones helping us to help farmers

Agribusinesses, - These work with contract farmers and are well placed within the value chain we help them monitor progress on their farms as well as to also help capacitate the farmers that they work with

Agric Extension Service Providers, - These are the ones that advise farmers on how to have a better yield , agronomy box is all about helping them manage well their portfolio of farmers giving customised advise to each every day through crop insights that are satellite generated that they cannot see with the naked eye but can interpret Non Governmental Organizations  Government Ministries and Agencies.

How they are underserved at the moment 

Resultantly our farmers still depend on money Lender shylocks who then charge exhobitant interest rates leaving the farmer with no substantial profit for their sweat, In most cases they end up in distress sell of produce immediately after harvest when commodity prices are traditionally too low, they also do it through intermediaries who charge 30-50% more than minimum support price so that they catch up with repayment plans of these loan sharks with mostly most people succumbing to suicide worst case and uncouth things Farmers still use legacy farming practices that is not backed by data because they lack access to the latest climate smart information which inhibits the ability to improve yield some of them still have limited access to human extension advice. Urbanization -Most of the agriculture land that we used to boast of is now being converted to residential estate development, commercial units and industrial action doing a great injustice to food security initiatives. Also 22 years ago the government of Zimbabwe had a fast track land reform program which saw land redistribution, however when this land was redistributed beneficiaries were not given Title deeds but offer letters which makes it difficult for lenders to hold it as security. Also these new resettled farmers are now the age of my grandparents meaning they can no longer work in the fields , policy then says children are supposed to take over and own the land but most of them are either in the city or not interested in farming hence land remains underutilised. 

Banks would also face high resource constraints to develop, deploy and monitor financial products that suit the needs of small holder farmers.

Kumbirai Chimkupete Co-founder and COO is youngest of the group born and raised on a farm is passionate about fostering partnerships and reflecting on customer feedback, Worked in a corporate banking department for 2 years before joining Financial clearing Bureau the leading Credit Bureau in Zimbabwe as an IT Support Officer , he brings 3 years experience in software engineering - https://www.linkedin.com/in/kumbirai-chimkupete/

Agatha Mandovha is an avid Business analyst who works at one of the most reputable farming consultancies in Zimbabwe, She has vast interest in devenlopmental ICT Projects as evidenced with her community outreach to try and decipher IT to people with little access to it in a manner that they will understand , as such she has been handling our communication drive and our pernetration into the Rural Areas has been seamless with her leading from the front

https://www.facebook.com/Umoja...

We have registered to date over 10500 rural small holder farmers and have piloted our system with one of the largest rural and social microfinance institutions in Zimbabwe , Virl Microfinance. 

These have been instrumental in helping us develop and they gave us a very detailed pilot report which helped us iron out issues after our system went live, We also have commitments from the Agriculture and Rural Development Authority to onboard about 30,000 Farmers as a pilot project before we eventually run together a national project that they are mandated to run by Government of Zimbabwe.

We are a proud representation of efficiency, Innovation and expertise which gives us an unfair advantage within the competitive landscape, we tick all the boxes as an ecosystem Low cost – A platform that is designed to generate more impact and create value to a marginalized target market therefore our clients have never second guessed working with us, Our bundled service which represents the ecosystem nurture of our Products and Services are something that is unique to the Umojalands Story and you won't find it anywhere else within our competitors and the fact that we are a one stop solution to the needs of our farmers stands out for them as we sell value before enjoying profits. Efficient – Very intuitive and easy to use platform which comes with a lot of benefits for our users like tracking productivity in the comfort of your home and timeous response to anomaly, easy loan tracking and management without having to leave the office, Better risk management for lenders, farmers and insurers, ready offtake market for produce and profitability, AI/ML capability to tell into future credit risk, Multiple Digital assets which are easier to integrate into existing systems and modular in nature , our clients don’t have to use the entire system. Founding Team – We are one of the start-ups founded by farmers and for other farmers, together we bring combined over 23 years of experience both in business and in dealing with farmers and this makes our task very much easier as we innovate towards the things we already know to be problem, Our personal nexus to the challenges that our farmers face really helped us to innovate the way we did and that why we stand out in the market

In short our arguement is that why is it that despite the many Mobile Money platforms that have been springing up and the fintechs that have the largest VC backing in Africa , the financial exclusion statistics are still the same and the calls to financial inclusion are growing louder and louder. At Umojalands we realise its all based on the issue of partial effort in the battle against exclusion to mean that we can derisk lending with credit scoring but if we dont help farmers monitor and become climate resilient through consistent advisory and extension service they wont produce much to motivate them paying back hence they remain risky. Thats why ours is an ecosystem rather than a single product.

As a social enterprise our work is closely tied to and in achieving the Global Sustainable Development Goals. These are our guiding principles and every other KPI we pursue in our social contract and social responsibility is guided and motivated by these goals with particular focus on SDG Number 1 , 2 ,5, 8 and 13 How we measure Social Impact Number of formerly underbanked farmers who can now access formal financial services due to their active digital financial identities and credit profiles. Percentage Increase in yield per given hectare on our small scale farmers pursuant to our drive towards a food secure population Economic resilience and Self sustenance of our users. 

Our desired Impact 

10500 Farmers reached to date
4800 Hectares of underutilized land Leased, sold, and utilized under different projects
3859 Generated Financial Identities and funded by our different partner Banks and Microfinances
9234 Farmers grew their yield by 30% , on average farmers where producing 1,5 tonnes per hectare, Through the use of our crop insights, optimum planting dates prediction and pre-season planning
4394 Farmers reported to have expanded their projects and can now almost self sustain their agriculture activities and their lives altogether from leaving on an average $3.50 a day they have also been able to go up to 8.00 per day

In short we want to move our farmers from Poverty Stricken small holder farmers to at least middle class farmers by 2030

Our Alternative credit scoring system - Our credit scoring system was developed using the php Framework Laravel 8 and runs on an onpremise server as well as backed on the cloud. We then use Big data with Predicitive analytics and AI and Satelite technology to monitor farms and produce advice for farmers based on information from the satelite, Data is then organised via our own propietary algorithm which then trims down the various sets of data to what is exactly useful to the farmer. Our Farmland, Livestock and Commodity trading platform is done on the blockchain using a combination of 3 protocols namely the hyperledger fabric protocol for the trading ERP Blockchain system, The Hyberledger Aries for Sovereign Agri Identities and lastly the Near protocol for our wallet services. This becomes a fully digital ecosystem of products that are aimed at making sure that we create a digitally connected farmer with the ability to aid in the achievement of a technology driven food secure Africa.

Over 10500 users registered to date, 18 lenders and 5 Agribusinesses have been to date.

In the next year we are planning to register 45000 small holder farmers , Get 30 more microlenders on board as well as 6 banks and effectively connect over 20 Agribusinesses running out grower schemes, we already have commitments from our partners , We recently partnered Zimbabwe Association of Microfinance Institutions (ZAMFI) and the Bankers Association of Zimbabwe as well as the Central Bank's Thematic Committee on Agriculture Finance and Rural Development these are the three top most institutions that deal with Lenders and being part of them means we have easy access to them

We also have a mandate with the Agriculture and Rural Development Authority (A government backed parastatal) to onboard over 2 million farmers of theirs on our platform which when the partnership materializes will see our database improve and become a good selling point for us even with investors.

Inconsistent regulatory environment , policy statements and Statutory Instrument (Bank supervision was once suspended out of the blue and the Stock exchange lost millions)

Most of the farmers do not own smart phones, only 60% of them at least have feature phones so it becomes difficult to extend services to them, digital adoption is still very slow
Trust issues by farmers themselves who are not yet at a point where they can fully comprehend technology
Information Technology infrastructure, Servers and security since we are handling people’s data and national projects.

Zimbabwe association of Microfinance Institutions - This is the Authority that all microfinances subscribe to and that governs them, Umojalands Fintech was also invited to sit and become associate members to this gathering of players in the Financial Sector so that they also participate in issues to do with policy and digital adoptions within the Microfinance Industry.

Financial Clearing Bureau (Historic financial data on our clients) - Financial Clearing Bureau is the largest Credit referencing Bureau in Zimbabwe. Umojalands after realising that if our case with financiers was to be strong and if our system was to sell good and credibly especially on scoring and giving historic data on people we had to plug and play into the FCB database for historic data, So we now have access to historic information which coupled together with alternate data really produces a good overview of the farmer and thus making financial inclusion viable 

Rural Farmers Hub - these are our strategic partners who happened to be alumni to the same accelerator program as ourselves , they helped us develop and integrate our Satelite Imagery APIs and provided advisory and support throughout our testing phase

Econet wireless - This is a technology partner that helped us develop our Soon to be launched farmers USSD Platform having realised how most of the farmers only have feature phones and not Smart phones

Near Foundation - These are our funders who are baking our blockchain based platform through their Near protocol, They provide development grants to viable businesses like ours to develop on the near protocol hit testnet and then finally mainet and product roll out.

Africa Blockchain Institute - Umojalands was part of a cohort of 4 Companies across Africa who were selected for Africa Blockchain Incubation programme which ran from January 2022 to June 2022 culminating into a Demo day where we pitched , they still provide support to us and facilitate investor meet ups

GIZ (German Agency for International Cooperation) - Umojalands is an Alumni to the GIZ SAIS Investment readiness programme which also ended Last year in November , we are part of their ecosystem and still benefit from the partner programmes investor meetups and 1 to 1 introduction to investors for example early this year we began our conversation with FINCA Ventures for possible investment

Ernest and Young - We also took part in the EY Enterprise Impact Programme which tentatively made us partners with them after coming out first in the Pitch competition that they Organised after our official mentorship

Virl Rural Microfinance - Pilot Programme with Virl Rural Microfinance.

Agriculture and Rural Development Authority (Being Finalised) - Finalising our partnership terms with the Agriculture and Rural Development Authority

Operating Model: Umojalands operates on a very smooth model that brings together all the players
within the ecosystem together which is the practically our brand essence, we are an essembler. We have 3
important stakeholders our farmers, our lending and non-lending financial institutions and our buying and
Investment Community.

Enterprise Summary Sheet for Umojalands

Farmer Acquisition:
● Currently targeting 86400 farmers in the 5 Farming regions of Zimbabwe, We have also been
tentatively mandated to onboard 1,8 million small holder farmers for the Agriculture and Rural
Development Authority if finalized it will be a good ass on for us this year as well
● Farmer approaches Umojalands for service, our front office collects data from them through our
onboarding forms and generate a score from that alternate data, the farmer then pays for the reports
and immediately that farmer profile becomes visible or live to lenders, insurers and other value chain
players, we produce 3 reports namely Farm report with a farm Grading, Credit worthiness report and
personality report.
● Once this onboarding is done, a farmer is assigned a digital identity number which becomes their
unique identification within the value chain, They can get easy discount deals with our value chain
partners
● This process can also be done by our accredited free lancing extension officers spread across the
country as time goes on we intend to establish mini Umojalands booths which will help us have a
better outreach with our rural small holder farmers whom we desire to impact.
● Our services e-financial service , AgronomyBox and the Farmland exchange can only be used after
successful client onboarding
● We have a payment gateway through our partnership with Ecocash that can also receive USD
payments and it’s very convenient for us.
B2B Acquisition
 Financial institutions and agribusinesses approach us for service (We are investing heavily into
our marketing).
 We visit their offices to do a demo of our platform and how it works to ascertain the exact
products that they need.
 If satisfied we then collect the relevant documentation including Company Registration
Documents and Tax clearance then sign off our usual contract and agreement of service offering
 We also have API end points that we can share with internal development team should they want
to integrate our system with their own existing systems
 Once everything is sorted the Institution pays initial onboarding fee and we set up accounts for
their usage.
Customer Acquisition:
● We have developed a fully functional marketing strategy that you can find here. We plan to have road
shows, rural field days and effectively improve our presence online. The audience we are targeting
might own smartphones let alone be on our Facebooks and LinkedIn but we know they listen to the
radio very much on their feature phones and buy newspapers a lot and we also plan on incentivizing
on such initiatives.
● We have built a robust and efficient marketing team that is led by our COO and CEO, a certified
business developer. These are the people that are leading and closing partnerships and mega deals
especially B2B
● Farmers are very stingy with their trust and skeptical about most of these things which we don’t 

blame them for because many like us or many that came before us did not deliver the way they had
promised to deliver, At Umojalands we believe this that’s why we bank on the people they trust most,
Village extension agents to do the work for us as free lancers paid on commission and this has been
our magic to attain a very healthy database to date.
● This is also in line with our CSR Policy to employ and assist local people especially women and youths
who will not only gain monetary benefits but also improve their digital skills and lead our digital
adoption. We believe we can make technologically affluent farmers by 2030.

Business Model:
Our B2B/B2C revenue Model is very simple, we charge 5% commission on loan disbursed and a $2, 50 farmer access fee for the year, our lending community also subscribe to our platform for US$ 50 monthly and this comes with 30 free access to farmer accounts. Agronomy box goes for $ 7 per Hectare per month
or US$28 per hectare per season (up to 6 months) and Financiers, Agribusinesses enjoy a 35% - 60% discount due to their huge portfolios. Lastly we collect 10% of the value of every lease or crowd sale that
we facilitate on our Farmland exchange.