We are excited to share our Agile Impact Series with Busara Center for Behavioral Economics and 60 Decibels. These reports reflect our work over the past six years across some of our strategic implementation partners.

Phase I Reports

Phase II Reports

 

INTRODUCTION

Mercy Corps’ AgriFin is an innovation program funded by the Mastercard Foundation and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to help organizations design, test, and scale digitally-enabled services for Africa’s smallholder farmers. Our core objectives include;  

  • Developing services that increase farmer income, productivity, and resilience, with 50% outreach to women;
  • Working with private & public sector scale partners such as banks, mobile network operators, agribusinesses, technology innovators, and governments;
  • Helping our partners develop bundles of digitally-enabled services, including smart farming, financial services, market access, and logistics supporting data-driven partnerships. 

To date, AgriFin works with more than 50 implementation partners, reaching upwards of 14 million smallholder farmers through a range of products and services across Sub-Saharan Africa.  

With support from Mastercard Foundation, AFA is now reaching 2.7 million smallholder farmers and on track for our impact evaluation and learning agenda. Combined with the Gates Foundation’s AgriFin Digital Farmer programming, we are now reaching just over 4.3 million farmers registered for services delivered through AgriFin’s work, as well as 16.5 million smallholder farmers reached through our COVID-19 and Desert Locust emergency response information services.   

MEASURING OUR IMPACT  

In recognition of the wide reach and diverse range of products and services offered through the AgriFin ecosystem, we are working with 60 Decibels and Busara to measure our impact across some of our strategic partners. Partners were selected based on their area of expertise and level of engagement. This approach considers differences across the following categories by adding the element of flexibility in the research approach; products and services offered, expected outcomes, harvest periods, and data available. From our analysis, we expect to gain further insights on the following: 

The impact of AgriFin partners on smallholder farmer’s income, productivity, and resilience to shocks;

The most important financial and value-added products and services to smallholders, including women and youth and why;

The impact of bundling products and services on uptake and usage of digital financial services;

The most preferred capacity-building tools with the highest impact on farmers’ willingness and ability to use digital financial services;

The most effective distribution channels for delivery of services to smallholders;

The effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on smallholders’ livelihoods and wellbeing.