This is the ninth blog in a series of blogs introducing the grantees and key partners supported by the GSMA Innovation Fund for Digitisation of Agricultural Value Chains.

Agriculture contributes 33 per cent to Rwanda’s national GDP and 72 per cent of the working population is engaged in the sector. Agriculture is the main economic activity in Rwanda with tea and coffee being the major exports.

MTN Rwanda has been piloting a digital solution with one of the largest tea companies to digitise key parts of their field operations, including farmer profiling, farmer procurement and farmer digital payment. MTN Rwanda, through their custom-made Agritech platform, designed and developed by Hamwe East Africa, has been working with seven factories of Rwanda Mountain tea to digitise tea value chains and enable farmers create robust economic identities.

The GSMA is supporting MTN Rwanda in scaling its service offering with a particular focus on enhancing livelihoods, financial inclusion and climate resilience of smallholder farmers. In this vlog, we speak to MTN Rwanda’s Product Manager, Jean Paul Musugi, and Rwanda Mountain Tea Project Coordinator, Kizito Mugabo, about this service, future plans and challenges as they look to deliver on our shared objectives.

THIS INITIATIVE IS CURRENTLY FUNDED BY THE UK FOREIGN, COMMONWEALTH & DEVELOPMENT OFFICE (FCDO), AND SUPPORTED BY THE GSMA AND ITS MEMBERS.