Chinenye Anuforo
With its commitment to fix Nigeria’s agriculture value-chain, a Pan-African technology company, Cellulant Corporation, has pledged to boost the sector with innovative solutions.
This is even as stakeholders gathered at the Cellulant’s inaugural partners’ summit themed ‘Technology for Transformation: Payments Connecting All of Africa’ in Lagos emphasized that adequate payment system in the sector would transform and create a movement that will change the ecosystem and make it more profitable for practitioner in Africa.
Agriculture is a crucial economic sector accounting for about 23 per cent of Nigeria’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but the value chain is highly underdeveloped.
Speaking at the event co-founder and CEO, Cellulant Corporation, Bolaji Akinboro, said the company would not relent in helping to improve the Agric value chain.
In his presentation entitled ‘From Farm to Fork: Transforming the Agribusiness in Nigeria Through Technology-What does the Future Hold’, Akinboro explained that the country’s Agric-value chain needed to be fixed to enjoy the immense riches in the sector.
He disclosed that consumption of food, the end product of most agricultural activities in the country is worth about $100million daily and between $36 billion to $50 billion annually, hence the need to improve the value chain.
Akinboro pointed out that adequate payment system in the Agric value chain would create an environment that will allow many practitioners to create jobs for millions of Africans who do not have jobs.
He explained that company’s goal is to use ‘Agrikore and Tingg’ initiatives to deliver services to the unbanked and underserved and also power economic inclusion by empowering everyone with access to financial services.
He noted that Nigerian farmers are ready to embrace financial inclusion as long as we are committed and ready to solve problems of economic inclusion in the country.
He further added that there are huge opportunities in agriculture in Nigeria and that payment technology is the only conveyor belt that would connect these opportunities and make it visible and attractive.
According to him, “there is this huge opportunity in agriculture but payment technology is one that would connect these opportunities and make it visible for everybody, because when its visible, it means the banks now can lend, people always say that the banks don’t lend to agriculture but the reason they don’t lend to agriculture is because they feel agriculture risky because they cannot see what is going on but with ‘Agrikore and Tingg’ platform they can now see what is going on and it becomes easy for banks to lend.
“Nigerian farmers want to be financial included as long as we solve the problem of economic inclusion and that is what we have solved through ‘Agrikore and Tingg’ initiatives.”l
Ken Njoroge, co-founder and group co-ceo, Cellulant Corporation, speaking at the event said that their aim is to democratize payment structure across Africa.
According to him, “Our goal is to use technology to create a movement that would change African Agribusiness and make it a community that will transform the continent”.
“The adoption of Tingg across the continent has done very well, as we currently speak we have Tingg in 18 countries and payment infrastructure in 35 countries, we have about 120 banks connect to this initiative and a large number of consumers that transact on this platform.
“So adoption has been great but our target is to get to 100 million users over the next seven to ten years.”
He urged Africans to use their communal and collaborative nature to build a market place that would transform the continent and create jobs for millions of its citizens.
He revealed that they will scale up the use of Tingg platform to many other African countries that is not yet covered by 2020.
“We want to expand Tingg program in a lot markets in Africa, so we hope to expand Agrikore into Kenya, into Ghana, in Zambia and maybe one other country across Africa in 2020”.