Mercy Corps unveils Sh500m AgriFin Digital Farmer initiative in Kenya - Capital Business
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Mercy Corps unveils Sh500m AgriFin Digital Farmer initiative in Kenya

The program will run for two years across Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Nigeria./FILE

Nairobi, Kenya, Jan 31 – Mercy Corps’ AgriFin has announced the AgriFin Digital Farmer (ADF), a two year, $5 million (Sh500m) initiative, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that will support the expansion of high impact, digitally enabled services to at least 1 Million farmers.

The program will run for two years across Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Nigeria.

ADF aims to increase smallholder income and productivity by 50 per cent, reaching at least 40 per cent women.

The program will result in increased smallholder farmer inclusion, productivity and income, as well as a range of digitally enabled models and institutional partners to drive inclusive agricultural transformation with direct benefit to smallholders throughout Africa.

ADF will build upon the ongoing success of Mercy Corps’ AgriFin programming, working with private sector partners across six countries in Africa and Asia and now reaching more than 2.5 million smallholders with digitally enabled products and services.

“The ADF’s approach will be grounded in our innovation partnership model driving product design, testing and scale through a series of engagements,” said Leesa Shrader, Program Director AgriFin Digital Farmer.

Under AgriFin, for the last 4 years Mercy Corps has been running the AgriFin Accelerate (AFA) program, a $25 million program funded by the MasterCard Foundation that seeks to address the inclusion gap for smallholder farmers (SHF) who lack access to affordable, accessible, demand-driven financial products and services that drive higher productivity and income for farm families.

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