Heifer International has announced an additional $3.5 million in funding for its tractor financing initiative in Africa.

According to the organisation, the additional funding will help accelerate the advancement of agricultural development in Africa.

The announcement was made two weeks after the launch of Hello Tractor, a Pay-As-You-Go tractor financing initiative supported by Heifer International.

The Hello Tractor mobile application, which provides loans for tractor purchases to be repaid through revenues earned by leasing them out to local farmers, has already enabled tractor purchases in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nasarawa and Enugu states of Nigeria.

In April 2022, the organisation launched the Digital Agriculture Champions (DAC) initiative for smallholder farmers and agribusiness entrepreneurs in Africa, with the initiative designed to deliver sustainable cost-effective training modules for smallholder farmers in Kenya.

‘Increased mechanisation – and tractors in particular – are vital as smallholder farmers scale up their production and build profitable and sustainable farming businesses’, President of Heifer International, Pierre Ferrari, said in a statement.

‘We are particularly impressed by Hello Tractor’s Pay-As-You-Go tractor financing model – an innovation that emerged from the AYuTe Africa Challenge, an agritech competition for young entrepreneurs run by Heifer International’.

The additional $3.5 million, according to the organisation, will enable Hello Tractor to acquire 75 tractors, which would be distributed in Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.

It is also expected that the total financing of $4.5 million will provide affordable access to tractor services to 872,250 smallholder farmers at an affordable rate, boosting farm productivity, employment, food security and farmer’s livelihoods over the next ten years

Photo source: Agriprohub