This year, UNCDF is launching a blog series about projects implemented in West and Central Africa to give voice to the practitioners we support through the Inclusive Digital Economies strategy.

Our colleague Arianna Gasparri launched the series on crowdfunding platforms in Ghana in February 2021. We are moving on to Senegal this March in a new series on agriculture, specifically on the digitalization of financial and non-financial services for rice farmers in the Senegal River Valley with a microfinance institution and a bank.

In May 2020, UNCDF launched a call for proposals to identify innovative ways to address the challenges faced by more than 45,000 rice farmers in the Senegal River Valley. The aim is to enable the farmers to sustainably increase their income.

A UNCDF study conducted in 2018 showed that rice farmers are inclined to use digital channels but that a number of constraints may limit the adoption and success of innovative solutions, in particular: the accessibility of information, the level of stakeholder structuring, the seasonality of financial flows, the remoteness of service points, problems of liquidity and accessibility of financial services, among others.

The objective of this call for proposals was to support innovations that would allow rice value chain actors to be interconnected, to increase the reach of digital financial services, improve the promptness and security of payments, raise awareness among rice farmers on mobile payment platforms and improve access to financial education.

Established partners in the agricultural sector

Following the call for proposals, UNCDF selected two partners: Banque Agricole, with its digital platform Agricash and the Union des Institutions Mutualistes Communautaires d'Epargne et de Crédit (UIMCEC).

UIMCEC is a network of four savings and loans cooperatives, present since 1998 in 11 regions of Senegal and offering savings, loan, money transfer, micro-insurance, technical training and financial education services. Since 2017, UIMCEC has been committed to the professionalization of its agricultural finance sector by developing adapted financial products and a digital and financial training programme targeting mainly women farmers.

The partnership with UNCDF will accelerate the adoption of digital tools for the professionalization and financing of rice farmers in the Senegal River Valley.

Within the framework of this partnership, UIMCEC partnered with Mlouma, a Senegalese start-up specializing in digital solutions for the agricultural sector, to develop three technical tools. Here is an overview of the three digital solutions:

• XamSa Bay is a service platform that allows farmers to be connected with the stakeholders of the rice value chain such as input suppliers and wholesalers
• Meteo Mbay provides information on price variations and shares meteorological information, including rainfall forecasts.
• ACAT is an agricultural loan assessment tool developed with the support of ICCO. This tool facilitates the analysis phase of the loan application, by integrating specific variables down to the type of crop, volume of inputs used, client history, etc. It reduces the risks associated with the loan for both UIMCEC and the farmers. The partnership with UNCDF has made it possible to digitalize this tool and make it available on a tablet to UIMCEC loan officers, which generates faster and more secure information processing.

The whole project is also supported by a vast user awareness campaign. To date, UIMCEC has sensitized more than 3,300 farmers on financial and digital literacy, on the different products (savings and loans) available, and the use of the digital platforms XamSa Bay and Meteo Mbay.

Regarding access to finance, UIMCEC has financed more than 740 farmers for an outstanding amount of CFAF 112 million. These are mainly women farmers organized in savings groups. The ambition of this partnership is also to duplicate this model for other agricultural value chains and in other regions of Senegal, to allow farmers to have access to digital financial services. With these innovative products and services, the project aims to help farmers generate additional income and thus contribute to improving their economic conditions in a sustainable way.