Stakeholders in the Agribusiness have 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.
They stated this at the Cellulant’s inaugural partners’ summit themed ‘Technology for Transformation: Payments Connecting All of Africa’ held on Thursday, December 18 at Oriental Hotel, Lagos.
Bolaji Akinboro, co-founder and group co-ceo, Cellulant Corporation, speaking at the event, said 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 their 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.”
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”.
“Our efforts towards achieving this target are in many facets, so first is to actually develop spectrum services that will truly add value in the agric value chain, which is the reason why we have done a lot of innovative program in agriculture over the last couple of years.
“As you know our believe at Cellulant is that payment enhances the development of the economy, so we’ve developed the value chain and once you develop the value chain it powers the underlining payments.
“The second strand is to make sure that we have built enough foot print across Africa and be able to rollout these solutions and solve problems most consumers in African markets face”.
David Waithaka, chief Business Development Officer, Cellulant Group, while speaking at the event reiterated that their goal is to enable businesses and consumers make and receive payments both in and across countries seamlessly.
He stated that their aim is to create a single payment platform for African countries just like we have in China with China Union, US and Europe with VISA.
Waithaka said, “We are positioning ourselves to create Tingg as the only payment platform for Africa to enable consumers in whatever country they are sitting across the continent to be able to make and receive payments.
“The African payment platform is very fragmented, so the sole purpose of what we are trying to do is to enable Africans, wherever you are from, to be able to make payment across the counter with whatever form of payment you have as Tingg in any country across Africa.”
Also speaking at the occasion attended by critical stakeholders in the agribusiness ecosystem including farmers, aggregators and retailers, Adebisi Adebise, managing director/chief executive officer,Wema Bank, reiterated the importance of cooperation between every player in the Agric value chain.
He identified problems of the Agric sector to include a low level of budgetary allocation, low financial literacy, a large percentage of unbanked population and the limited capacity of financial institutions to understand the value-chain, assured that Wema Bank would continue to partner Cellulant to improve agriculture.