In a bid to ensure improved food production and security, Afrimash Company Limited, an indigenous agriculture and eCommerce platform, has introduced a USSD technology and Agent Network system for farmers to have access to farm inputs at the click of a button.
Afrimash is positioned to improve the way farmers are engaged in the rural parts of the country using emerging technologies.
Speaking on the importance of the newly introduced USSD technology, the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Afrimash Company Limited, Ayoade Ahmed Oyedotun, said: “In partnership with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), we started the Agent Network, which tries to solve the critical problem of getting quality agricultural inputs for farmers. Afrimash has over 3,000 products on its platform and we are passionate about helping farmers gain easy access to them. What we did was to get agents in every community to serve these farmers and farming clusters, ask them what they need, help them place their orders on our platforms and get them delivered. In collaboration with USAID and GIZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit), we started this network in 16 states, Kaduna, Kebbi, Adamawa, Yobe, Gombe, Borno, Benue, Niger, Ebonyi, Delta, Cross River, Oyo, Osun, Lagos, Ogun and Ekiti.”
Ayoade further said: “Across each state, we have a minimum of a hundred agents. When you multiply it by these sixteen states, we have over a thousand six hundred agents across these states. This has positively impacted our finances and revenue. We have created jobs for over a thousand six hundred people and we have also been able to reach more than one hundred and twenty-three thousand farmers across the nation.”
