This archive report was first published on 10 July 2019.
On July 10, 2019, Mastercard announced the signing of two public-private partnerships that will extend the reach of the Mastercard Farmers Network (MFN) to millions of smallholder farmers in Africa.
The partnerships, with the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) and the United States African Development Foundation (USADF), aim to further roll out the MFN platform across Uganda, making transacting safer and simpler for stakeholders in the agricultural value chain.
The MFN is an award-winning solution that connects small-scale farmers with potential buyers, integrates their businesses with payment systems, and enables them to build a digital transaction record.
Without this technology, many smallholder farmers struggle to access the market for their goods and financial tools that would enable them to grow their businesses and improve their livelihoods.
“Mastercard is a trusted network that builds ecosystems through partnerships, which allow us to connect people to, and help them to benefit from, the digital economy,” said Raghav Prasad, Division President Sub-Saharan Africa, Mastercard.
CIAT is working with Mastercard to scale up the MFN platform to support farmers in the bean value chain, aiming to grow their impact from over 200,000 farmers in East Africa to over one million farmers in their different African countries of operations by 2020.
USADF has started using MFN in Uganda to help reach underserved communities across all value-chains in the agricultural sector, with a target of adding 20,000 farmers by the end of 2019 and an ambition of growing this to 1 million farmers by end of 2020.
