KEY MESSAGES
- Description: Integrated business services to maize, bean and soy producers from financing to supply chain and road-to-markets : adapted investment credits, warehouse storage solutions, support in selling at fair prices in Eastern African markets
- Specificity: 276 members in the EAX network, among which agricultural cooperatives, commercial banks, brokers specialized in agricultural products or traders
- Impact: Connecting smallholders to a 173 million people market in Eastern Africa
FUNCTIONING
ISSUES ENCOUNTERED BY FARMERS:
Numerous post-harvest losses
Limited access to financing
Limited access to markets
Limited access to information about markets and selling prices
SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY EAX:
Availability of professional and modern storage warehouses, close to production areas
Enabling smallholders lacking fixed collateral ownership to access loans offered by partner banks using stored harvests as guarantee
Access to a market broadened to Eastern Africa, amounting to over 170 million people
SMS-based daily update of market prices and relevant information to the farmers to determine the best moment to sell their production
SCOPE
UGANDA / RWANDA / KENYA
260 000 small farmers in 200 cooperatives
BUDGET
N/A
IMPACTS
Agricultural productivity
23 800 Mt of storage capacity, and thus protection of the harvests
Climate change
Increase of small farmers' resistance to climate hazards
Sustainable dev. goals
Increase of farm income through a better market access and a better selling price
NEXT STEPS
Reaching new productions: wheat, sorghum, rice, tea, coffee, pyrethrum ower, minerals
EAX expansion to other Eastern African countries: Tanzania, Burundi, DRC
