90% of smallholder farmers in Africa depend on rain-fed agriculture which is not reliable (as a few weeks without rain threatens their harvest) and don’t harvest enough to feed and support their families simply because they lack access to the technologies and resources they need to be more productive and grow their crops sustainably. Volta Irrigation loans assets and farming inputs to farmers instead of cash to ensure that the loan is utilized for the intended purpose. Finally, we pair up our loans with an eco
friendly, efficient and affordable irrigation technology that enables farmers to irrigate their farmland throughout the year irrespective of the unpredictable rainfall pattern.
We have found that lending to farmers is most effective when we lend irrigation service (a major problem faced by 9 out of 10 farmers) instead of cash. This ensures that the loan is utilized for the intended purpose, and overcomes the challenge of access to irrigation which the World Bank says can increase the agricultural output of Africa by a massive 50%. Finally, we pair our loans with agriculture training, so that farmers can maximize the income impact of the irrigation service that they use. These allow our clients to see at least a 50 per cent increase in income and ensures we are repaid.
We have developed sales funnel which targets programs that research has empirically proven doubles the income of smallholder farmers. We partnered with farmer cooperatives to get access to the pool of farmers to whom we loan our irrigation service to and repay at the end of each farming season. We also provide organizations in the space with data and charge them a fee for an end to end data solution that solves their data issues including hardware, software, and support. We currently serve 64 smallholder farmers in Rwanda, and 45 farmers in Uganda, and have a repayment rate of 98 per cent.
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