Ubia Soko: The story of Tech and Smallholder farmers

We have learned over the years that you cannot implement field based programmes without partners. We recognise that although we may have the technology and knowhow to implement the rollout of our mobile app, Ubia Soko, we cannot  do this on our own. It would be impossible. We have brought together partners to help make the programme relevant - not only to traders and input distributors - we also need to win the hearts and minds of farmers.  One of our partners, the Agricultural Council of Tanzania (ACT) has been working in Tanzania for many years, providing grassroots level support to farmer associations, building trust. ACT assists Ubia Soko  by introducing us to  farmer organisations, agricultural traders,  processors and their networks. ACT also helps  us with local Government contacts at the district and village levels and ensures awareness and acceptance of the platform at the national level.

Meet the Ubia Soko field team on their stopover in Chisano today: Frédéric, Jesko and Joshua. Fred is our CIO and has lived and worked in Tanzania for many years; he has in-depth knowledge of the region. Jesko is one of the larger commodity traders in the Morogoro region and has been central to creating awareness of Ubia Soko amongst farmers. Jesko's familiarity with the region, having lived and worked within the community for over 30 years, is fundamental to creating meaningful farmer relationships.  Joshua has worked with us over the years on a range of commodity and smallholder based programmes and in particular our work on farmer organisation training with the World Food Programme in 2015/16. Together, their combined knowledge and experience is helping us to fine-tune the Ubia Soko product. We feel confident for the future of the platform having such a great team.

We gained important insights from our work in Ngalimila this morning. Many farmers were complaining that they have tried using fertilisers but all they do is make the maize grow taller with no yield increases. Farmers are invariably buying cheaper urea and not complementing this with additional nutrients like P and K or new seeds. This highlights the importance of inputs packages. The distributors and Ubia Soko are working together to formulate two simple and affordable inputs packages that we then offer to farmers via the app. For farmers this is a process of discovery - some are finding it easier than others to seize the opportunity - But the lightbulb moment is when we demonstrate the  mobile money payments platform integrated into the process.  Many farmers are comfortable with the process because they send and receive remittances and they see that it is possible to use this useful service  in other ways to improve their farms.

We were finalising our initial field training  sessions today. It’s been an insightful and valuable stage in our rollout. We are continuing with further farmer registration over the next 2-3 weeks. The traders with whom we have been working are taking over this part of the process  - keen to extend registration. Our target is to have registered some 10,000 -15,000 farmers during 2019 with them trading mainly rice using Ubia Soko and ordering inputs provided by our distributors. We will continue to blog of our progress over the coming weeks. However if you have any questions please let us know by sending a comment

We recognise the importance of mainstreaming gender equality and social inclusion  in our work. Research shows that involving women in agriculture creates more stable supply chains in addition to increased productivity and higher product quality. T he gender gap in bank account use is currently about 10-15%, however the gap is being reversed in mobile money accounts, where women outnumber men by about 22% in Kenya. The case for mobile banking, which rests heavily on personal transfers and payments, is very relevant for women, who play an active role in managing the family’s finances. As these services grow and evolve, women’s financial equality should improve.  However, our own observations over the past few weeks show that there is still a long way to go particularly in the regions where we are currently operating. But by integrating mobile money into the Ubia Soko platform we expect this to go some way in supporting greater gender equality.