Our  Learning Approach

Learning is one of our key objectives. We capture evidence and practical use cases at the intersection of technology, finance, and agriculture to drive innovation across the agri-fin-tech ecosystem. 

POSITION

〉 We are positioned at the apex of the emerging fields of digital finance and Climate-Smart Agriculture. 

COMMITMENT

〉 We aim to serve as an information resource related to digitally-enabled services for smallholder farmers.

APPROACH

〉 This includes documenting and sharing our program learning, research and impact along our journey.

LEARNING QUESTIONS

Our learning questions gather insights from three pillars: the client/participant, partner and ecosystem levels. They are informed by the collection of ‘lean data’ and the ‘Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development indicators formulated with our core commercial partners around specific interventions to deliver digital solutions to smallholders.

Client/Participant Level
  • What impact do different digital financial and non-financial services have on smallholder farmers’ productivity, income, and resilience?
  • What digital products/services empower women in agriculture and enhance women’s control in agricultural practices and related access to necessary inputs, financing and other services?
  • What bundles/incentives/models of digital and non-digital services drive high rates of adoption and active use?
  • How does the use of digital data drive farmers’ access to financial and non-financial services and improved livelihoods? How can farmers be educated around building and managing their digital personal data in order to access financial and non-financial services?
  • How can services best be designed for and considered as affordable for smallholder farmers? What are the links to service pricing and service delivery, taking into account service provider economics and business models? What promotes active use over time?
  • Which are the D-CSA solutions that most effectively increase the climate resilience, adaptation and mitigation capacity of smallholder farmers?
  • What are the needs of farmers in relation to access and use of digital services? What works to address these needs?
  • Which channels are most effective at reaching smallholder farmers with different digital products and services? How and why?
Partner Level
  • What are the key success factors to delivering different digital products and services to smallholder farmers profitably? What are the key success factors and barriers to scale? What are the major costs and opportunities?
  • How can digital service providers best integrate a gender lens into their end-to-end operations (product dev, marketing, distribution channels, incentives, etc.)?
  • How do D-CSA solutions enhance digital platform service providers’ products, reduce risk, and increase business performance?
  • What are best practices for platform partnerships in data sharing and analytics between corporates, digital innovators, and other partners?
  • Which digital platform models are most effective to reach smallholder farmers for impact, scale and financial viability? How does the journey differ depending on platform type (bank, MNO, agribusiness, public sector, etc.?
  • How can digital service providers / platforms build out cost-efficient yet effective field-force models to ensure uptake and service delivery?
  • What incentives are needed and effective for service providers to continue working with subsistence-level smallholder farmers? 
Ecosystem Level
  • What are the most effective ways to unlock investment in digital solutions, platforms and tech innovators targeting smallholder farmers?
  • Given the nascent state of cliamte-smart solutions, how can AgriFin and other actors contributed to a vibrant ecosystem of climate-smart solutions that are affordable, accessible and high impact for smallholder farmers and the organizations that serve them?
  • How does the improved collection, sharing, use of data and analytics drive smallholder farmers’ access to digitally enabled services driving productivity, income and resilience?
  • How can global public good products accelerate the digital ecosystem for agricultural transformation? What role do public goods (data & analytics, research, etc.) play in evolving the ecosystem to enable farmer access to services and viable service provider business models?
  • What role has partnering with government and public institutions played in enhancing provision of digital services to smallholder farmers? How can digital service providers platforms effectively partner with public institutions to reach smallholder farmers?
  • How do digital solutions “unlock” climate finance for smallholder farmers? As the public sector plays a key role in promoting and facilitating adaptation to climate change strategies, what role has partnership with public sector played in provisioning D-CSA solutions?
  • What is the role of farmer groups in providing access to digital services for smallholders and how can these institutions drive uptake and usage?

“We are encouraged [by the information available through our mobile phones]. If you don’t know the type of seed to use, you can know. If you don’t know the type of medicine to use, you can know. If you don’t know the type of fertilizer to use, you can know. If you don’t know the spray to use, you can know.”  ~Matheka Munyao.

GENDER LENS

Our goal is to reach five million smallholder farmers across Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Uganda, and Tanzania – 40% of whom are women. We aim to empower women in agriculture by through increased access to demand-driven, technology-enabled bundles of financial services and combinations of rural advisory services, smart farming solutions and markets. The program will directly target service delivery partners in Tanzania and Uganda to develop gender-centric bundles of digital services for women smallholder farmers that can be viably delivered at scale.

Client/Participant Level
  • How has increased access and active use of digital products increased women’s productivity, income, and resilience?
  • What products, services and approaches effectively address social norms that limit women’s access to technology and related critical services for their farm and family activities. How should contextual factors be incorporated into product design and delivery?
  • What bundles/incentives/models drive high adoption and active use by women farmers specifically?
  • How can digitally enabled services and digital data be harnessed to address the digital divide for women in a way that empowers, enables and protects them?
  • What does affordability mean for a woman smallholder farmer? How can services be made more affordable? What promotes active use over time?
  • Which products, services and customer journeys are effective at building climate resilience for women farmers?
  • What are the unique needs of women farmers in relation to access and use of digital financial and non-financial services? What works to address these needs?
  • What channels are the most effective in enhancing women farmers’ access to finance/inputs/market and uptake of digital products?
Partner Level
  • How can potentially higher costs of service delivery to women be bridged to ensure effective, equitable service to women that are commercially viable for service providers? What are the scale opportunities, drivers and challenges in reaching women?
  • What are the best approaches to building partner staff capacity, strategies, products, marketing, field support and overall business models to drive transformational approaches?
  • How can sustainable D-CSA products enable equitable access for women and transformative outcomes?
  • How can data sharing models best bridge the digital divide and enable equitable services for women smallholders?
  • Which types digital platform models and associated product bundles/approaches are most effective to reach women smallholder farmers at scale? Can adapted customer approaches result in equitable and transformational impacts for women?
  • How can digital service providers / platforms build out cost-efficient yet effective field-force models to ensure women farmers uptake and service delivery?  
  • What incentives are needed and effective for service providers to continue working with subsistence-level women smallholders? 
Ecosystem Level
  • What are the most effective ways to unlock investment in digital solutions, platforms and tech innovators targeting women smallholders? What are the specific risks and risk mitigation tools to be used?
  • How can the improved collection, sharing, use of data and analytics smallholder drive women smallholder’s equitable access to digitally enabled services and transformational outcomes?
  • How can public good platforms be best adapted to drive equitable access for women and transformative outcomes?
  • What role can partnerships with public sector play in scaled provision of equitable and transformational services for women smallholders? What role can private sector and development actors play to enhance role of government to drive meaningful change?
  • How can the dual risks associated with climate and gender be addressed through innovative financing mechanisms to scale services to women smallholders?
  • How do women farmer groups specifically influence the adoption curve and impact of digital products and services on women farmers?

CLIMATE LENS

We support digitally enabled products and services that improve smallholders’ ability to cope, adapt and thrive in the face of climate change. We work to build a bridge between the rapidly growing digital farmer services ecosystem and climate smart agriculture (CSA) by designing, testing, and scaling solutions that support farmers to adapt to climate change.

Client/Participant Level
  • What impact do different D-CSA products and services have on smallholder farmers’ productivity, income, and resilience?
  • What products, services and approaches successfully address the specific vulnerabilities of women smallholders to climate change?
  • What bundles/incentives/service models lead farmers to adopt and actively use D-CSA practices and services at scale?
  • What types of digital data are most important for climate-smart solutions and early warning services (location data, yield data etc. for other services like precision agri, etc.) and how can they be collected at scale and shared with relevant players in a way that empowers and protects the farmer?
  • How can nascent climate-smart products be made more affordable for smallholder farmers?
  • What services drive meaningful learning and behavior change related to climate smart agriculture, including equitable access to and use of digital delivery channels?
  • What are the specific needs of smallholders in order to understand and adapt to or mitigate the effects of climate change? What is the most successful approach to meeting these needs through a product journey?
  • What channels are most important in delivering the range of climate smart learning, products and services to smallholders to drive meaningful behavior change and adoption at scale?
Partner Level
  • In what ways can the integration of D-CSA practices into digital service offerings enhance partners’ overall business and financial performance?
  • What are the best approaches to building partner staff capacity, strategies, products, marketing, field support and overall business models to drive transformational approaches at the intersection of climate change and gender equity?
  • What are the sustainable models of D-CSA services, public private partnerships, financing and global public goods for climate related solutions?
  • How can data sharing models and partnerships best enable climate-smart solution development, delivery and financing?
  • How can digital agriculture platforms be harnessed to drive climate-smart agriculture? How would they need to change from current models? What partnerships, products, services, data flows and business models are needed?
  • How can digital field force become meaningful drivers of climate-smart agriculture to drive product adoption, active use and behavior change in a cost effective manner?
  • What incentives are effective for service providers to deploy early-stage climate smart products and services? 
Ecosystem Level
  • What are most effective instruments, partnerships and risk mitigation tools and approaches to catalyze greater investment in D-CSA solutions that are meaningful for smallholder farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa?
  • How can data sharing models and partnerships best enable climate-smart solution development, delivery and financing?
  • How can public good platforms be harnessed to drive climate-smart solutions, behavior change for farmers and scale models?
  • How can governments become a meaningful driver of successful scale and impact of digitally enabled, climate-smart solutions and related behavior change of farmers and agricultural value chain actors?
  • How can other non-traditional actors in agriculture play a larger role and/or support this effort?
  • How can farmer groups, cooperatives and other trusted aggregation approaches be leveraged to support scaled efforts to build D-CSA approaches?

IMPACT RESEARCH

AgriFin Accelerate, in partnership with Safaricom Ltd, launched its flagship product, DigiFarm, in 2015. DigiFarm is a platform tailored for smallholder farmers that offers access to information, quality agricultural inputs, financial services such as savings and credit products, digital supply chain management, extension services and access to markets. To measure AgriFin’s impact at the farmer level, we have commissioned two rigorous research studies on DigiFarm:

DigiFarm Impact Assessment

At the institutional and ecosystem levels, we are kicking off several agile impact studies to be conducted in 2020 on partner engagements covering aspects on financial services, farmer capability, smart farming, rural advisory, market access, logistics and distribution. The impact assessment will employ a ‘difference in differences’ design. 

DigiFarm RCT

At the farmer level, we commissioned a Randomized Control Trial (RCT) to test exposure to the different service offerings available on DigiFarm. The RCT was designed in partnership with Georgetown University’s Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation (gui2de). It will enable us compare the effect of those using DigiFarm products in isolation, or as a bundle with other products, while considering the return on investment. 

LEARN MORE

 

AGRIFIN MERAL

We conduct program Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, Accountability, and Learning (MERAL) to understand the link between activities, outputs and outcomes at the client, partner and ecosystem level and their link to achieving program impact. The below graphic illustrates how the MERAL objectives will be carried out, by linking our results framework and design, through to the activities and key learning questions, through to the learning process itself and how insights and lessons are disseminated to have wider impact.

 

MERCY CORPS COMMUNITY ACCOUNTABILITY REPORTING MECHANISM (CARM)

Accountability provides a channel for all community members and/or partner organizations to provide feedback, suggestions, complaints, and concerns, in a manner that is safe, confidential, transparent, and accessible and enable Mercy Corps AgriFin to respond and make any necessary programmatic or safeguarding adaptations and to ensure the safety, security, and empowerment of program participants.