Agro firm creates app to link farmers to potential investors

AGRO-BABED company Hamara has created an application, Hamara App, which is meant to link farmers with potential investors and access markets in a bid to improve agriculture productivity in Africa.

The Hamara App gives users free access to training material and courses as well as notifications about upcoming in-person training sessions of

training camps.
It also gives users access to farm management tools such as Broiler, Layer, Sasso online record sheet that incorporate vaccination schedules, cropping schedules, production checklists and market as well as industry surveys.

Other benefits of the App include the ability to track the progress of their production units against international standards, it also enables farmers to collaborate with fellow farmers, buyers or service providers, gives users a platform to access markets and allows users to transact securely within the App ecosystem.

In a statement, Hamara head of marketing and public relations, Mr Clarence Mutangara said Africa has 24 percent of the world’s arable land but is producing less than one percent of the world’s food requirements.

He said this is both a crisis and opportunity which is magnified by current world events such as the conflict in Ukraine, climate change, the changing food footprint as the middle-class living standard measure grows across the world and the massive impact this is having on both food availability and food prices across the globe.

Mr Mutangara said these factors combined present an equally urgent need and opportunity to unlock the productive potential that Africa has.

“These experiences led us to develop the Hamara App, which provides the technology to replace the manual system and allow for scaling up. This is a potential game changer for unlocking productivity across Africa and is similar to what Uber, AirBnB and Lyft have done,” he said.

Mr Mutangara said it was difficult to finance Africa’s farmers because of lack of land title, lack of integrity and the challenge of side marketing.
Hamara supports small-scale farmers through outgrower programmes where farmers are trained and given resources to produce chicken for the group.

Mr Mutangara said the reception of the application by farmers has been mixed with outgrower farmers that produce for Hamara being the most active users of the App.

“The culture of using tech platforms to conduct business let alone farming is still in its infant stages so we are still pioneering through our efforts,” he said.

Mr Mutangara said small-scale farmers’ challenges can be summarised as lack of knowledge, lack of markets, lack of financing, logistics problems, difficulties in accessing inputs and lack of tools and systems to facilitate production.

“The solution is to combine technology with the systems, experience and exposure we have developed over years to package an agribusiness solution on a farmers smartphone,” he said.

The application, Mr Mutangara said, helps one become a better farmer by facilitating an agribusiness journey from a beginner to a professional.

The growing clarion call to embrace technology without reservations continues to be amplified with the need to apply it on all spheres of production including agriculture, mining and manufacturing.

Technology promotes ease of doing business, efficiency and effectiveness, which improves competitiveness of the products. –chronicle