CoAmana Marketplace

Digital marketplace for rural farmers to gain access to data, markets, upskilling, insurance, and more.

Past and Current Partners

GIZ, AGRA, Sterling Bank, ACRE Africa, Arewa Youth Agripreneurs, Kaduna Agriculture Development Agency (KADA), Acumen, Mercy Corps Agrifin

Active Countries

Kenya, Nigeria

Thematic area(s)

Gender, Climate

Technology

Marketplace

Organisation Name

CoAmana

The Problem

The Amana Marketplace seeks to address three interrelated problems associated with agriculture and agricultural transactions, namely; difficulty in business transactions, access to climate change information and products, and disadvantaged female farmers in rural patriarchal communities.

The Solution

Amana is a digital marketplace ecosystem designed to increase ease of business and access to information for small businesses and rural farmers, address price inconsistencies and provide working capital to financially challenged agents to facilitate transactions between farmers and buyers.

How it works?

Step 1: Farmers register through their sales agent or by themselves at zero cost and update their commodity information frequently with assistance from agents
Step 2: Agro-processors, commodity traders, and other customer groups register on Amana Market
Step 3: Agro-processors, commodity traders, and other customer groups make a purchase request from farmers on the platform and select their preferred payment and delivery option
Step 4: Once a buyer makes a request or is approved for working capital, supply agents confirm the quality of the commodity, prompt payment to farmers via Amana Market, aggregate the commodities from different farmers and facilitate delivery using local logistics providers who are also registered on Amana Market
Step 5: Logistics managers work with operations teams to ensure local logistics providers and farmers receive payments via Amana Market
Step 6: After delivery, data on preferences, management, interactions, ratings and data is stored securely
Step 7: CoAmana generates feedback data on performance. Feedback data/ratings combined with market and management information are shared with individual farmers, cooperatives, or ethical institutions on an ad-hoc basis

Bridging the digital divide

CoAmana uses a specific approach of attracting and recruiting digital savvy yet locally rooted agents to work with rural farmers in their communities to access and utilize the Amana marketplace for trade. This is particularly advantageous for farmers as it cuts out the cost of transportation to the marketplace and reduces dependencies on prices set by independent aggregators.

Impact and highlights

Provided 10,000 farmers with income improvement through market linkages for produce sales.
160,000 farmers were up-skilled through tailored data and informational content.
300+ farmers qualified for agricultural input loans through data analysis and partnerships with Sterling Bank.
1500+ farmers received crop insurance to boost resilience.
7,262 buyers making purchases through the platform.

Plans for expansion

CoAmana plans to expand to Uganda and Ghana in the immediate future. With the longer term plans to target the entire sub-Saharan African region.

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