Smallholder farmers across Nigeria needs to access right technology, market information and adequate infrastructure to reduce the N12 billion the nation loose to food wastage every year.
This was disclosed by the Chief Operating Officer, Tingo Mobile, Alao Ayoade, during the launch of the company’s Mobile App in Lagos.
According to him, almost 80% of the farming population in Nigeria being smallholder farmers scattered across the country in villages, which have no electricity, proper irrigation, storage facility or even good road network.
What Tingo boss is saying
He said, “Almost 80% of the farming population in Nigeria being smallholder farmer scattered across the country in villages, which have no electricity, proper irrigation, storage facility or even good road network. The farmers are losing N12 billion to food wastage yearly, if they excess right technology and other factors mentioned above, the nation will save such loss.
“With our technology, we connect millions of farmers through their various cooperative societies thereby getting them to markets locally and internationally from their comfort zones. With this, farmers have unlimited access and market information such that their worries about infrastructural challenges, time and product wastage is totally addressed..
“It is a win win situation for these farmers and commodity traders across the world as well as our company serves as the link bridge. To simplify this process and also assist these farmers, we have had to provide them with our customized mobile devices. We currently have over 15 million of such devices in the market.”
According to him, the implications of the development were that the company is helping in reducing time wastage, increasing productivity of farmers and helping their wellbeing as they have more time to rest.
He added that the development increases profitability by 40 -60%, thereby boosting farmers investment to produce more and also connecting them to a global market and network that is helping in resolving challenges in their farming value chain.
Also speaking at the event, a commodity trader, who is the Managing Director of the Magnificat Ltd. and SC trade and investment, Agboola Gbolahan noted that platforms provided by the company fast track off taking Of agricultural produce for export purposes.
He said, “I am very particular about the security of the business transaction. I was facing the challenge of trust and usually needed a lot of time to travel around the country to off take products but coming on board under Tingo agritech resolved all of that.”
Aside from the success in the agricultural sector with technology, Ayoade explained that TingoPay SuperApp is coming on the backdrop of recent policies by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) with directive to Money Deposit Banks to implement higher charges on cash transactions.
He said, “The SuperApp would tackle challenges of limited payment options for end users, inability to resolve transaction issues of time with banks, business continuity due to funds, using multiple solutions to perform day to day transactions, complexity with adoption of application and use case, business continuity for Agent as the T+1 time on settlement from CBN can be challenging.
“Although users may need a commercial bank account, the plan by the company may totally take off the stress of entering into a banking as the super application has the capacity of resolving all banking challenges including loan and in fact went further help businesses manage their day to day challenges.”
He added that it is also offering a Peer-to-peer lending option and that the new development on one hand, would allow end-user purchase airtime as well as data for the four major Network providers in the country (MTN, AIRTEL, GLO and 9Mobile) as well as Smile and Spectranet, finance Television subscription within Nigeria for Startime and Multichoice as well as generate token for users from electricity providers in Nigeria.
The Tingo Pay is also expected to provide agency banking, where the solution will provide POS terminals for agents to perform CashIn/CashOut transactions. Ayoade said the new solution will also provide soft loan to customers with ease of access and repayment.. “We are ready to disrupt the market and we are not joking about this,” Ayoola Olaide, the Chief Commercial Officer of the company said.
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