The Project shall promote financial inclusion among 60,000 smallscale coffee farmers who due to their dispersed,remote locations, remain largely excluded from formal banking services.
In Kenya, the coffee sub-sector is populated by over 500,000 smallholder farmers who generate the greatest demand for credit and remain largely excluded from formal financial services. Currently, there is very limited financing for coffee farmers coming from mainstream financial institutions due to the remote, high altitude locations of coffee farmers. The Project intends to partner with a mobile telephone operator (Safaricom Ltd) to expand credit outreach through use of mobile banking services.
The project will establish a mobile banking platform to ensure faster and timely credit payments right to individual coffee farmers.The platform will also enable farmers to make repayments, make loan balance requests and access coffee market prices.
The project will empower coffee farmers to manage individual loan accounts.It will improve cash flows during the long marketing periods and curb the trend of illegal coffee sales outside the auction system.Beneficiaries are 60,000 smallscale farmers.
This project has provided additional documentation in a Microsoft Word file (projdoc.doc).
