The 2019 SCF Innovation award is presented to Agri-Wallet, a financial solution that is bringing the benefits of supply chain finance to smaller companies in Africa involved in the agri-food industry that are often underserved by other financial institutions.

It is a mobile business application developed by Dodore Kenya with support and financing from Rabobank. To date it has onboarded 25,000 customers who are involved in both sourcing cycles and selling cycles.

The solution aims to serve the small and medium-sized companies in the agri-food industry that are often underserved by financial solutions.

“Agri-wallet is a ‘total supply chain finance’ solution meaning we ensure that all actors in the supply chain, even the small ones, have access to finance,” says Ad Rietberg, founder of Agri-Wallet.

Agri-Wallet uses a blockchain-based cryptocurrency that only has value within this agricultural supply chain. The use of these tokens avoids the diversion of funds and reduce risk for banks participating in the programme. Agri-Wallet tokens are stablecoins and may be pegged to the US dollar – ensuring price stability.

The solution works by providing early payment and financing options to farmers and allowing the smaller buyers of the agri-produce time to repay Agri-Wallet later, and therefore improving their working capital position.

Farmers benefit from Agri-Wallet by receiving funding they can use to buy seeds, fertilizer or other inputs needed to grow their next crop. Having the necessary funds to buy higher quality inputs can help farmers grow higher quality crops with better yields. Agri-Wallet provides famers with automatic input savings option and access to loans for the purpose of buying inputs only.

Agri-Wallet just finished the validation phase. During the validation phase, the company was supported by Rabobank and it processed $1.1 million payments.

Agri-Wallet is available in Kenya, Tanzania and Rwanda. Next year it will also be available in Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Vietnam, Indonesia. Honduras, El Salvador and Poland.