Ubia Soko: The story of Tech and Smallholder farmers

The AGRIinsight field team has arrived back in Ifakara after two weeks on the road. This  is a small rural town in the Kilombero District, Morogoro Region and is the main trading centre for Kilombero and Ulanga districts. It is also the headquarters of one of the main traders with whom we are working. When we set off on this road trip, we were optimistic but also realistic. We're delighted the trader who has been alongside our team has concluded that the Ubia Soko platform offers huge opportunities for them. He has therefore decided to pick up the system and use it to further support the many farmers with whom he works.  The trader has agreed over the coming weeks to follow up with the farmers' associations that they work with and ensure that all rice paddy sales are traded through Ubia Soko. As the traders and agrodealers take ownership, w e are therefore  transitioning from our pilot activities to more substantial sales and real scale. We are very...

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

The traders we have been working with on the Ubia Soko rollout have started to lead in the training and awareness building sessions in the villages. The great thing is that they bring specific insights and local knowledge into these sessions as well as showing how Ubia Soko can help address real challenges that farmers face. Putting the app into a context that resonates with farmers makes a huge difference and helps to trigger ownership. 

We have been pleased with turnout at our village-by-village rollout. One thing we are learning is the various routes we can take to scale the uptake by farmers. It is clear that the distributors and traders we are working with are keen to take on the farmer registration. One of the traders has been with us throughout the training sessions, working with farmers tirelessly to get the most out of Ubia Soko. Everyone is hanging in there even the bats who joined us in the training session in Mbingu.

While we know some international development agencies encourage participation through so-called "sitting fees" - Ubia Soko relies on word of mouth, farmer networks and the usefulness of the product to attract interest - we use the app to message farmers. 70 plus smallholders, both men and women, travelled up to 4 kms to attend the Ubia Soko training session in Michenga today. Almost all participants had phones but not all phones were reliable. It was a very wet day but farmers overcame their logistical problems to be trained to use the Ubia Soko app.

In July a few of the Agriinsight team visited Mbalaji village. When we returned today we were encouraged to see that the farmers had kept their passwords and wanted to continue to use the Ubia Soko service. We worked with farmers who were keen to train and learn more and some helped new farmers to register. This was a succesful farmer association; the secretary of the association can run the training himself. We will work with these proactive groups and their leaders. This village was also well supported by mobile network operators - how can we replicate these optimal conditions?

Farmers are keen to learn and incredibly patient as long as what they learn fits with what they already know. Then they can integrate the new knowledge and use it. Frederic shows farmers the Ubia Soko app and then trains them to use it.  These lessons are more practical than theoretical. Farmers make very basic use of their phones and it seems phone companies don't provide sufficient coverage in rural areas. Coverage is irregular.  We'll find out later what the network in Mbaranji is like.

Although diesel powered toll milling is less powerful, in off grid locations like Magombera it's necessary for local farmers to find a way to dehusk rice.   Ubia Soko  is helping farmers to trade rice collectively and increase revenues.

Mwaya is in the Southern Highlands of Tanzania where our colleague Frederic is training farmers in using our Ubia Soko app. The app is designed to help farmers order inputs and trade their commodities.