Standard Bank launched OneFarm as a pilot in Kasese, Uganda

We worked with a maize aggregator, five co-operatives, 350 farmers and a local tech start up. The bank purchased seeds, fertiliser and pesticides on the farmers’ behalf. Farmers repaid the bank when they delivered their maize to the aggregator. Increased access to working capital enabled the farmers to cultivate more land, leading to a demand for tractor services to plough larger areas. Through the local start up, a team of 16 local agents was chosen from the co-operative leadership, empowered with training and smartphones, and employed to do farmer profiling, manage input distribution and support farmers. The team also employed an agronomist to provide training on best practices to the farmers and manage demo farms. Access to finance and expertise enabled the farmers to substantially increase their capacity. Productivity on many of the farms improved, and yields increased by an average of 38% per acre. In 2020, we refined the model and data-intelligent selection criteria, enabling us to reduce unrecovered loans from 50% in the first season to below 20% in the second season. We are now rolling out OneFarm with two more local start-ups acting as enablement partners and 500 farmers. We’ve launched pilots in crop insurance, and agronomy, where short training sessions are provided to farmers linked to rewards.

In South Africa, we’re using the platform to launch a relief marketplace to match farmers with aid organisations

In Mozambique, we are working with partner organisations to improve and extend linkages within the agribusiness value chain, from input suppliers and primary agriculture to agro-processing/value addition, exports, logistics and warehousing.

In Eswatini, we partnered with the Women Farmer Foundation, donating E500 000 (R500 000) to fund the purchase of production tunnels for women and young people across the country’s four regions.

In Nigeria, we are a leading disbursement partner of the Central Bank of Nigeria intervention fund programme, and have disbursed over NGN 55 billion (R2.2 billion), of which N38 billion (R1.5 billion) was disbursed in the past five years.