What is One Million Farmer Platform?
Despite Kenya being the digital innovation hub of Africa and home to many of the continent's innovative start-ups in digital agriculture, many of Kenya's farmers have yet to benefit. On April 5-6, 2019, a group of partners led by the World Bank Group, ran the first Challenge competition to identify Kenya's most promising agri-tech innovations to bring one million Kenyan farmers onto an impactful digital platform. The second Challenge competition has been recently launched and the application deadline is November 30, 2022.
Technologies such as mobile apps, data analytics, and digital extension can improve farmers' yields if deployed and scaled effectively. Technology can enable suppliers to aggregate farmers' demand for inputs like seeds and services like tractors, which can then cost-effectively be delivered to farmers at the farm gate. Other promising approaches include financial services, enterprise development, market access, and data analytics. Given the significant level of World Bank investment in agriculture with the Kenyan government, the application of robust technology solutions can also be a force to accelerate impacts.
Why does Kenya need One Million Farmer Platform?
The World Bank, through two of its existing projects, the Kenya Climate Smart Agriculture (KCSAP) and the National Agriculture Inclusive Growth Project (NARIGP), is cumulatively investing 450 million USD in enhancing productivity, resilience and profitability of the million farmers across all 45 rural counties in Kenya. As part of these projects, dedicated analog investments are earmarked at the farm and producer-organization levels. In addition, dedicated teams across all 45 rural counties have been recruited and are working closely with the farmers.
Kenya is leading the agricultural technology space, with 30% of DATs in Kenya. Kenya is also rated as one of the top-rated digital ecosystems on the continent. Kenya's public sector strategies are aligned with the agri-tech Agenda. The Government is engaging one million farmers through its existing World Bank operations who could benefit from improved access to DATs. These three reasons made Kenya an ideal location for piloting the DAT Knowledge and Challenge Conference and launching the One Million Farmer Initiative.
Due to the success achieved through the KCSAP and NARIGP projects closing in June 2023, the National Agriculture Value Chain Development Project (NAVCDP), with an investment of 250 million USD, will be initiated to increase market participation and value addition for farmers in the project areas.
What does the Platform offer?
Mentorship
Technical Assitance
Exposure
What is the program objective?
We help innovators scale up their technologies
We link the innovations with the counties
We link innovators to finacial services
We provide a platform for innovation to achieve SD goals
Our Aim
With the cohorts of innovators, the platform will offer a holistic solution keeping smallholder farmers' challenges as a focal point. Through the One Million Farmer Initiative, the cohorts of innovators will achieve economies of scale in reaching smallholder farmers. The platform will enable the cohorts to take advantage of large-scale identification, data collection, data analytics services (e.g., agronomy content and geospatial farm and soil maps), and digitized farmer profiles. As such, each ecosystem actor will save on undertaking these activities themselves or spending more resources by operating without this information. Consequently, this will translate into improved business model sustainability for the cohort.
Since April 2019, in partnership with the Ministry of Agriculture and World Bank, teams have facilitated several workshops between the cohort of 26 innovators and counties that has resulted in partnerships between the innovators and between these innovators with 26 counties so that farmers could access bundled services on the ground and enhance their productivity and profitability.
Our Co-Sponsors
Our Partners
