“We work to empower farmers in Rwanda – giving them the knowledge and resources to improve their yields, improve their profitability, and improve their livelihoods,” Walker Morris, CEO of the CDI said recently, busiweek.com reports.
This involves connecting individual farmers and cooperatives with banks, agro-dealers, retailers, commodity processers, crop buyers, and other producers to the creation of a digital payments ecosystem. CDI is an initiative of the Clinton Foundation set up by former US President Bill Clinton and Visa, the card payment multinational.
Morris said: “This new offering with Visa will improve the financial stability and security of these farmers. Farmers will have the resources and training to take advantage of digital payments, connecting them to Rwanda’s growing economy.”, the source cites.
CDI’s work in Rwanda focuses on helping farmers improve their livelihoods through better training, improved connection to markets and inputs, and stronger linkages between farmers, producers, and other stakeholders in the agricultural sector.
“The main barrier to increasing the yield of individual farmers is lack of access to working capital. A secondary concern is making sure they get paid more quickly for their harvests. We think we can solve both sides of this equation if we both digitize the payment process and educate farmers, which is what this partnership with CDI is designed to achieve.” Stephen Kehoe, Senior Vice President for Global Financial Inclusion at Visa said.
This effort takes advantage of Visa’s development of a broader payment landscape, for example merchants who accept payments and consumers who make payments, as well as its partnership with banks in country and beyond. Through these connections, CDI’s smallholder farmer training and market access program will help farmers adapt to digital payments to increase their money management and business skills while establishing a strong foundation for economic development.
Visa’s solution ensures a means of transacting by using digital payment, thus reducing the need for cash within the value chain. The partnership will consist of a two-phased program, starting with a pilot in Kayonza and Gatsibo districts, in the Eastern Province of Rwanda.
In the first phase, one farmers’ cooperative will receive financial literacy training and have access to and test a Visa product through which they will receive and make value-chain payments. This will enable CDI and Visa to learn how to best understand the deeply felt and unmet needs of the farmers, which will inform scale-up efforts in the second phase.
Coupled with in-depth impact analysis, the pilot will help lay the foundation on which CDI and Visa roll-out the most fitting financial services to CDI’s farmer network in Rwanda.
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