Mlimi Digital Wallet: Building Wealth for Smallholder Farmers in Malawi
There is a persistent myth that most African farmers have only the most rudimentary tools and wouldn’t be able to benefit from advances in digital technology. In truth, large majorities of people across rural Malawi use mobile phones. Their primary problem, however, is not a lack of connectivity, but rather access to integrated solutions that meet their specific needs on a timely basis.
Although the financial services market has been proliferated by various financial solutions, there still exists much to be desired where customer financial literacy is concerned. Most solutions are released to the market without adequate customer engagement and education.
In rural areas, for instance, financial services beyond basic village savings and loan associations (VSLA) are scarce, expensive, and inflexible. A big part of the problem for rural smallholder farmers is that their cash flow is unpredictable. They have money at the end of the growing season when they sell their crops, but they’re short of money at the beginning of the year when they need to buy seeds and fertilizer. Few smallholder farmers have access to financing through traditional banks and microfinance, and most loans need to be repaid in regular installments, which makes it difficult for them to honour these payments, given their infrequent and unpredictable income.
While a number of smallholder farmers have disposable income that they would like to save, a dilemma they face is the lack of awareness of existing investment options.
With this in mind, we developed Mlimi Digital Wallet, our first Malawian Fintech solution purely designed for smallholders. This digital wallet helps farmers save funds for subsidy seeds and fertilizers. Using these already existing technologies and business models like Airtel Money which the majority of smallholder farmers are already familiar with, has helped us to deliver a solution that is affordable, easily accessible, and user-friendly.
Mlimi Digital Wallet is powered by Africa’s Talking’s SMS and USSD mobile technology, this way rural smallholder farmers who mostly have feature phones can benefit from services without any hindrance. Through the digital wallet, smallholder farmers lay away some money throughout the year against the purchase of certified and quality seeds and fertilizers. That way, smallholder farmers spread out their income, invest in inputs that let them increase yields, and put their families on a firmer financial footing.
Over time, we have managed to build trust with our customers because now they are able to check balances at their fingertips. Additionally, customer engagement has been at an all-time high by virtue of including the element of SMS — as notifications are sent during every transaction as well as when there are system upgrades or any other changes that they ought to be informed of.
With Africa’s Talking’s APIs, we are bringing a world of opportunity to rural smallholder farmers to address pressing issues in access to agricultural finance and savings. In using these already existing technologies, which the majority of smallholder farmers are already familiar with, we have been able to deliver a solution that is affordable, easily accessible, and user-friendly.
Stanislaus Sakwiya is an entrepreneur based in Malawi and is the Co-founder and Managing Director of MlimiPay. Catch up with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Africa’s Talking is a Pan African tech company that works on helping developers in Africa make their ideas come to life with ease. We do this by giving them access to communication and payments infrastructure through easy-to-use APIs.
Want to explore our APIs? Learn more about us, reach us at info@africastalking.com and join the conversation on Slack!
