Hamwe East Africa, a pioneering AgriTech-FinTech startup, is revolutionizing the way farmers in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi engage with the digital economy. Founded in 2013 as an AgriTech company, Hamwe has since evolved to seamlessly integrate financial technology (FinTech) into its offerings, ensuring that farmers can not only adopt technology for farming but also transact with ease.
“We work with underserved farmers in off-the-grid areas of Uganda and East Africa. While others focused on peri-urban areas and central regions, we decided to go where farmers lack services such as internet access. These are the actual smallholder farmers that need support,” says Stella N. Lugalambi, a co-founder and managing director of Hamwe East Africa.
Hamwe’s innovative approach involves building a comprehensive farmer management system that provides digital identities and economic identities to smallholder farmers. This system enables farmers to access finance by proving their earning potential and ability to manage financial resources.
“To date, we have over 400,000 farmers in Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi. We plan to expand to Kenya and Tanzania and grow our numbers to one million farmers by 2025. The beginning was challenging, but now we onboard more farmers easily because we know what to work,” Lugalambi adds.
Hamwe East Africa’s bundled services include farmers’ profiling, needs assessment, off-taker identification, input supplier and market connections, agronomy services, crop insurance, payments, and access to credit. The company coordinates its efforts through digital community entrepreneurs who support between 100 to 300 farmers each.
To further support farmers, Hamwe has integrated FinTech solutions into its platform, enabling seamless transactions. The company has partnered with mobile network operators MTN and Airtel for payment gateways, allowing farmers to receive payments directly to their phones.
Additionally, Hamwe has signed up with banks and Flexipay to provide alternative payment options, ensuring that farmers can access their money conveniently.
Lugalambi emphasizes the need for government, telecom operators, and development partners to invest more in network upgrades and data connectivity to enable more farmers to benefit from these services.
Hamwe has partnered with Mastercard Inc. to deliver a community pass, an electronic card that stores farmers’ information. Currently used by about 20,000 farmers, the card is accessible offline and has plans for future payment integration.
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