DML outgrowers at a SACCO meeting

Uganda’s agricultural sector contributes heavily to the country’s GDP and employs approximately 75% of the rural population. Yet, despite its importance of agriculture to Uganda’s economy there are few opportunities for rurally living youth and farmers to develop and improve their farms. With limited access to markets, financing, or job opportunities a majority of rural farmers remain in poverty with limited opportunities for advancement. Since 2007, DML has grown its outgrower network to more than 50,000 farmers. Organizing them into Savings and Credit Cooperatives (SACCOs), DML provides them with in-kind loans of agricultural inputs as well as training and premium prices for their harvests, improving farmers’ economic outcomes and improving rural employment opportunities.
Orisa Raphael Jawino, CEO of DML, said that he first realized that his model was not just working, but really helping, a few years into his project. He began to notice on farm visits that his outgrower farmers’ houses were improving. Season by season, he noticed more farmers using better materials in their houses and building walls around their house plots. The next season they would add sheet-metal roofs. Although he could show from his accounts that rural production was increasing and so were the revenues generated by both DML and its outgrowers, seeing the villages where his farmers lived improved made his impact tangible for him.

Women outgrowers using Farmcrowdy’s platform.

Nigeria has the highest farm output in Africa and is among the world’s top-ten highest producing agricultural economies. Approximately one third of Nigeria’s workforce is employed in the agricultural sector and close to 87% of its population engage in agriculture as an economic activity. Despite the high output, Nigeria struggles to meet its own subsistence needs and relies upon imports to satisfy demand. Nigeria’s agricultural sector suffers extremely low productivity, due to reliance upon age-old farming techniques and farmers’ limited access to financing. Only 2.5% of Nigeria’s smallholder farmers have access to financing or credit, limiting their ability to expand or improve their farms. Even farmers who can access credit are limited by problems of timely loan disbursement and very high interest rates. Farmcrowdy addresses farmers’ access to finance through an innovative agricultural platform that partners farmers with sponsors to mutual benefit, providing an alternate source of finance to improve their farms.
One of Farmcrowdy’s outgrowers is Patience Arthur-Akpan. She is 23 years old and lives in the Onna Local Government Area in Akwa Ibom State in Souther Nigeria. As an aspiring university student, financial hardship and family obligations forced her to give up her studies and work with her family on their farm. Through working with Farmcrowdy, Patience was able to earn enough to save up for school fees and return to her studies in Sociology at the University of Uyo, in Akwa Ibom State.