Lersha

Ethiopia | Finance, Insurance, Loans

Company

Lersha provides digital services to enable smallholder farmers to access farm inputs, hire mechanisation services and receive advice, credit and insurance through their in-house call centre, mobile app and agents.

Problem

Smallholder farmers in Ethiopia account for 95% of production, often managing multiple farm enterprises under variable climatic and uncertain socio-economic conditions. Farmers need additional information on the availability and prices of recommended farm inputs, as well as a mechanisation service to catch the short planting window, receive expected market prices for their produce and access credit services.

Solution

The Lersha platform provides a one-stop digital service for smallholder farmers to access farm inputs, hire mechanisation services and request dynamic agro-climate advice. The GSMA supported Lersha in November 2022 to scale up the use of their platform among smallholder farmers by promoting agricultural finance and climate-risk insurance. The grant is also being used to improve the Lersha platform by providing more customised agricultural extension through increased participation of service providers and frequent agro-climate advisory services.

Impact

Since partnering with the GSMA, Lersha has:
– Onboarded more than 234,000 new farmers, 30% of whom are women. Nearly 130,000 users are accessing weather alerts, hazards alerts and agro-advisory, and 19,300 are receiving loans.
– Partnered with Safaricom Ethiopia to promote inclusive digital financial services to smallholder farmers. Safaricom Ethiopia will leverage Lersha’s agent network to bring about social impact through agricultural mobile loans.
– Partnered with the Ethiopian Agricultural Transformation Institute (ATI) to create digital profiles for 1,050,000 smallholder farmers and provide agro-climate advisory and fertiliser recommendations.