Essymart Africa, an agricultural technology enterprise, is revolutionizing the lives of smallholder farmers in Eastern Uganda by providing them with access to quality farm inputs, market information, and financial services.
Essymart recognizes the challenges faced by smallholder farmers, such as limited access to quality inputs, lack of market information, and financial constraints. To address these issues, the company offers a range of services. These include:
- Access to quality farm inputs at competitive prices, including stress-tolerant seeds, organic fertilizers, and pesticides
- Input financing to ease farmers’ cash flow
- Training in regenerative farming techniques
- Technology-based services and communication
- Post-harvest services to reduce spoilage
- Access to premium markets for better crop income
Leveraging USSD technology
Essymart Africa utilizes USSD (Unstructured Supplementary Service Data) technology to deliver information to farmers via their cell phones. Farmers can dial a USSD code to access information on weather, local market prices, farming practices, water management techniques, and agricultural subsidy programs.
The platform also provides personalized advice to farmers based on their location and type of farm, and allows them to ask questions and receive answers from agricultural experts.
Essymart Africa has integrated financial technology into its platform to enable farmers, input dealers, and other users to make and receive payments through mobile money and bank transactions. The platform also facilitates access to farm inputs on credit, providing relief to farmers from financial stress.
Expanding impact
Currently, Essymart Africa is serving hundreds of farmers in the Eastern Uganda districts of Mayuge, Iganga, Luuka, and Kaliro. The majority of these farmers are smallholder women farmers.
The company plans to expand its services to the entire country, aiming to disrupt Africa’s agricultural sector using fourth-generation revolution technologies such as AI to end hunger and poverty among marginalized smallholder farming communities in rural areas.
“We are working with 20 agents. We have so far impacted over 4000 farmers, majority of them being women smallholder farmers dealing in maize, beans and vegetables,” says Mr Elvis Kadhama, the co-founder and CEO of Essymart.
Essymart Africa was hosted on Day 6 of the HiPipo 40 Days 40 FinTechs initiative season five.
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