Bridging the Food Security gap

Create the “agrifinancing.com” platform to guide agri-entrepreneurs to relevant lenders, while educating them on emerging Cardano solutions.

The team behind the Ideascale proposal is Moving Frontiers (Kenya) Ltd, a leading advisory firm that specializes in agricultural finance.  Originally coming from the Netherlands, Maarten Susan (MD) has over 25 yrs experience as Bank CEO, entrepreneur, investor and SME consultant.

[IMPACT]

The audience that is targeted consists of farmers and Agri-SMEs across agridultural value chains, with Kenya as a pilot country.

The tagline of AGRIFINANCING.COM is “connect to 100+ lenders”. As such, the hugely fragmented landscape of financiers is addressed by bringing them onto the platform. But that is not enough. Most emerging entrepreneurs (especially those located in rural areas) are not well versed in finance and need to be guided towards those financiers that are relevant to their credit needs and the state (maturity) of their company. To this extent, an algorithm will be developed called Malengo (Swahili for targets). Through 8-10 questions, lenders that are in scope will be selected from the pre-registered pool of Commercial Banks, MFIs, SACCOs, Funds, FinCos, Crowd etc. In addition the platform will educate on agri-entrepreneurship and finance, and will create a vibrant community that includes hundreds of Business Development Service providers (BDS).

In this section we shall explain the link to Cardano.

Dapp, Defi, blockchain, insurance, digital identity or smart-contracts will one day help small businesses to access credit at scale - but this will still take a little time. Blockchain solutions need to be further developed.  And African infrastructure must be improved: internet coverage, smartphone usage and especially the cost of web access are all critical factors that need to be solved.

There are - however - things that we can do today:

To contribute to the Cardano Africa mission and prepare the grounds for future crypto-based finance solutions, we shall help with building the brand in two ways:

(a) Sensitization

Build awareness of the workings, ideas and developments of crypto through weekly blog articles – with an emphasis on Cardano as the crypto of choice for Africa. To this extent, agrifinancing.com shall work closely together with a local media company that has 500,000 page hits per month (during Covid 1 mln+).

(b) NFT to raise additional funds

Generate additional revenue to build out and scale the AGRIFINANCING platform through creating an NFT market proposition under the brand AfricanFarmerz.

The ideas behind AGRIFINANCING and the MALENGO (algorithm) have been thought through by our team for over two years. Moving Frontiers is a leading Agri-finance consultant in East Africa; we understand the issues and maintain the relationships with financiers, investors and donors. Many references can be supplied.

But every proposition has risks. The ones that we see are:

1. Lenders do not want to sign up

We shall not ask fees to partake in the platform; all we require is a curated and standardized lender template. Many lenders have already pledged support.

1. Target audience

We shall not reach an audience of 100,000 followers in one year. That is a possibility, but we shall target to reach this numbers through collaboration with our media partner, influencers and SocMed specialists.

1. The NFT platform will not generate additional funds

The agrifinancing platform will move to a more commercial footing in phase two (year 2-3). Revenue streams include advertising and matchmaking fees. In addition we think there’s a good change to attract donor interest once we can demonstrate proof-of-concept.

Funding from the NFT proposition would speed up things, but the success of the platform does not (!)  hinge on meeting NFT revenue targets.

1. Longer term sustainability

Eventually the platform should move to a commercial footing and become financially self-sustainable. However, once up and running, AGRIFINANCING can be maintained by the Moving Frontiers team on a very low-cost (subsidized) basis for the foreseeable future.

[FEASIBILITY]

The workplan is attached.  It shows the activities clustered as follows:

1  AGRIFINANCING

2  MALENGO

3  AFRICANFARMERZ

4  LEGAL

5  MARKETING

6  CONTENT

7  FSP MOBILIZATION

Assuming a project kick-off on Monday May 2nd, the entire project would be executed in 15-20 weeks with many project acitivities running in parallel.

Grand Total USD 76,000 as follows:

AgriFinancing

- Website/platform 2.500

- Crypto blog content 3.000

- Marketing 5.000

- FSP mobilization 2.000

- Domain 1.000

- Legal 2.000

** TOTAL 15,500

Malengo

- Malengo workflow 7.500

- Malengo engine 34.000

- Malengo content 5.000

- Legal 2.500

- IP registration 2.000

- IT costs 4,000

** TOTAL 57,000

AfrianFarmerz NFT

- Artwork 1.000

- Website/platform 2.000

- Marketing 2.500

** TOTAL 5,500

Maarten Susan - ex Bank CEO, investor, consultant, agri-finance specialist, SME accelerator

Dominic Kinuthia - Agri-finance specialist

ELizabeth Okunda - Marketing/Social Media Specialist

Erna Karani - IT architecture

Elliot Gram - NFT development

[AUDITABILITY]

Progress to be measured through 3 key performance indicators:

1. the launch of agrifinancing as a platform, including a working Malengo engine (algorithm) and links to the AfricanFarmerz NFT marketplace;

1. distribution of between 50-75 original blog posts in first 12 months after launch, evangelizing the future of crypto in non-technical language, with a special focus on how Cardano based solutions will be applied to food and agriculture challenges in the years to come;

1. a social media “following” base exceeding 100,000 within 12 months after launch (mostly Kenya based); note that at this point no structured crypto social media groups exist in Kenya, other than some smaller trading communities. Our goal is to give Cardano awareness a tremendous boost.

Success does not merely imply meeting the project deliverables and creating an interactive website.

Instead, achievement means two things: the creation of a platform that adds tangible value to its stakeholders (and that value can be measured by increased access-to-finance, and/or BDS engagement).

But success also means contributing to the Cardano mission to advance blockchain as a world-changing technology. And we would do so through creating a sizable and vibrant community of followers that read our blog-posts and debates them. The ultimate success would be to scale the concept of AGRIFINANCING to other African countries.

This is a new project.

SDG Rating

The "Bridging the Gap" proposal scores high on:

SDG 1 : No Poverty

SDG 2 : Zero Hunger

SDG 3 : Decent Work and Economic Growth

SDG 4 : Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

In addition, the proposal also has a bearing on:

SDG 5: Gender Equality

SDG 12: Responsible Consumption and Production