Scaling Mobile Layaway Model to Move 1 Million Smallholder Farmers in West Africa Out of Poverty with
Dakar, Senegal and New York, NY— April 5, 2022
Today, myAgro — a non-profit social enterprise in West Africa that has pioneered a mobile layaway payment model enabling farmers to save, increase their income, and become food secure — announced its participation in The Audacious Project 2022 cohort, a collaborative funding initiative housed at TED which convenes social entrepreneurs to support bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges.
With The Audacious Project’s support over the next five years, myAgro’s bold solution will scale its mobile layaway model to serve 1 million farmers in West Africa.
“Today the majority of farmers in SubSaharan Africa are not able to access the seeds, fertilizer and technical training they need to make their farms climate-resilient and their families food secure. This is a $100B problem each year in SubSaharan Africa alone, and credit is not scaling quickly enough. We can cut this gap in half if farmers had a safe place to save money throughout the year,” said Anushka Ratnayake, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of myAgro. “Now is the time to expand a savings-led solution helping farmers move out of poverty. We’ve already supported over 100,000 farmers in doubling their harvests and increasing their incomes by 35%, even with the challenges of the global pandemic. We will reach our Audacious goal by enabling farmers to conveniently save their own money to invest in their biggest productive asset–their farms. We’ll do this by scaling our digital layaway platform and offering data-driven solutions.”
60% of myAgro’s farmers are female. By providing women the opportunity to save for high-quality fertilizer and seed, myAgro empowers them to generate more income and be financially independent. Additionally, the flexibility of the myAgro model lends itself especially to the lifestyle and needs of women. Women can pay little by little using their mobile phones, enabling them to make payments privately, without the knowledge of their husbands, family or friends. This reduces social pressure and empowers a woman to make the decisions she prefers.
Ratnayake stated, “The UN estimates that if women had equal access to the same tools as male farmers, 150 million more people would be food secure. We use a gender and data-lens to everything we do from the crops we grow, the trainings we provide and the savings model itself to make it easy for women to participate in rural areas in a secret and secure way. Women will tell us, ‘Only I know how much I’ve saved,’ ‘I don’t have pressure to spend money’ and ‘I finally have a way to get ahead.’ This is the power of savings and mobile layaway.”
West Africa’s population has been growing faster than any region in the world and food security has long been an entrenched problem in the region, affecting millions. The COVID-19 pandemic is predicted to increase the number of people who will go hungry by more than 30%, escalating the urgency to improve food security. With climate change, the seasons are becoming shorter and more unreliable, making it harder for farmers to grow enough to eat.
“It is unconscionable to think that, every day, millions of smallholder farmers and their families are food insecure and lack the means to move out of poverty,” said Anna Verghese, Executive Director of The Audacious Project at TED. “myAgro has the technology, solutions, and agricultural expertise to help change this reality, by scaling its solution further and faster — and we are so proud to stand behind their team in this effort.”
80% of the world’s poorest 2 billion people are farmers and many of them don’t grow enough food to eat. Government subsidies for fertilizer and seeds, which can be as much as $90 million a year for a single country, don’t meet the full demand of these farmers and often are directed towards larger farms and male farmers, even though women are the backbone of farming in Africa. myAgro offers a scalable solution for smallholder farmers, especially women farmers, that is providing the food security and increased incomes to move these farmers out of poverty.
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Visit AudaciousProject.org to watch the reveal of the Audacious projects and TED Talk by myAgro’s CEO.
About myAgro: Founded in 2011, myAgro is a non-profit social enterprise that has pioneered a mobile layaway savings model that enables farmers to invest their own funds in high-quality agricultural products to significantly increase their harvests and income. myAgro has supported more than 100,000 farmers in becoming food secure by increasing farm yields.
About The Audacious Project: Launched in April 2018, The Audacious Project is a collaborative funding initiative that’s catalyzing social impact on a grand scale. Housed at TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, and with support from leading social impact advisor The Bridgespan Group, The Audacious Project convenes funders and social entrepreneurs with the goal of supporting bold solutions to the world’s most urgent challenges. The funding collective is made up of respected organizations and individuals in philanthropy, including the Skoll Foundation, Virgin Unite, The Valhalla Charitable Foundation, ELMA Philanthropies and more. The Audacious Project works with the Science Philanthropy Alliance to identify and vet high-quality basic science projects. Each year The Audacious Project supports a new cohort. The 2021-2022 recipients are The Center for Tech and Civic Life, ClimateWorks: Drive Electric, Code for America, Glasswing International, The International Refugee Assistance Project, myAgro, Noora Health, The Tenure Facility, and Woodwell Climate Research Center.
For questions and interviews, contact:
Amber Crossen, Global Communications Manager
amber.crossen@myagro.org
