Using Mobile Tech to Shape Smallholder Farming in Rwanda
Until about two years ago, our field staff served close to a million farmers through weekly group meetings, in which roughly 40 or so farmers would congregate for agricultural training and to order farming supplies. In 2020, we rolled out the use of USSD (a text messaging-based service available on basic mobile phones), through which our customers could get services straight from their phones. USSD functions are important tools that give farmers access to farming and market information and allow them to sign up for products and services.
This year in Rwanda alone, over 600,000 farmers enrolled for farm supplies and other products, like trees and solar lights, using USSD, demonstrating the scale of its adoption and the pivotal role that simple technology can play in farming.
By enabling farmers to self-enroll through USSD with limited assistance from a field officer, we are augmenting our staff’s management capacity to several hundred farmers as we look to achieve our aim of working with 10 million farmers by 2030 across Sub-Saharan Africa.
A field officer’s mission: Planting the seeds of climate resilience within her community
Fifty-two-year-old One Acre Fund field officer Alphonsine Nyiransabimana dreams of a thriving agricultural industry in Rwanda, where farmers can earn a decent living. She is working to fulfill this mission by helping farmers in her local community access credit and quality seeds so that they can increase their harvests and adapt to extreme weather caused by the climate crisis.
More Than A Tree: How trees are changing Esther’s future
On most days, you will find Esther Wangari tending to her farm, located deep in the heart of Kirinyaga County, in Kenya’s central highlands. Bordering her maize and beans fields, Esther’s latest passion – tree planting – thrives. For this Kenyan smallholder farmer, her new venture is more than just about planting trees; it is also about her livelihood and securing her family’s future.
Why climate-smart agriculture is important for Burundi's new generation of farmers
Younger farmers like Asterie are inheriting the mantle of farming from their parents at a time when the impacts of climate change are accelerating. It is crucial for them to acquire climate-smart farming skills to ensure that they are still able to harvest well and support their families.
1 farmer, 61,000 tree seedlings
Meet Yeshiwas Ayehu, an innovative farmer from Ethiopia whose commitment to growing and distributing trees in his community is changing their lives and the landscape around them.
