AN initiative by Zanaco providing various agriculture services has seen 6,000 small-scale farmers benefiting from the facility.
Zanaco head of digital sales Mathew Tembo said more 6,000 farmers have benefited from the facility in the last two years.
Mr Tembo said the initiative was intended to meet various needs of agricultural value-chain and creating an enabling ecosystem to support small-scale farmer’s growth in Zambia.
Speaking during Agricultural and Commercial Show in Lusaka, Mr Tembo said the product was targeted at small scale farmers to help them access financial services and information concerning farming such as weather and marketing.
“Intervention is aimed at improving access by smallholder and small rural agribusiness to a range of agricultural financial services to grow and protect farming communities. AgriPay is a solution developed by Zanaco using technology which is in line with this year’s theme,” Mr Tembo said.
“This product is targeted at small scale farmers because a larger group that participates in agriculture is subsistence farmers,” he added.
He said the AgriPay business model was helping to meet the needs of the market.
Mr Tembo said the farmers were able to access financial services, Information concerning the farming seasons, crop marketing and opportunities in the sector among others through the product provided.
He said the account under the product has no minimum opening balance and no user fees.
“The account under this product has no minimum opening balance and no user fees. This is because we understand that smallholder farmers need room and a platform to able to play such as financial services and products like information which relates to agricultural seasons and crop trainings for free,” Mr Tembo said.
He said farmers required technical capabilities and information to be able to identify crops which were more profitable, especially for those that wanted to take farming as a business.
He said for farmers to take farming as a business, they required a platform to access information and opportunities to get money to drive their economies even at a personal level