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...

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 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.