How Digitizing Agricultural Input Payments in Rural Kenya is Tackling Poverty: The Case of One Acre Fund

This new case study features an examination of the nonprofit organization One Acre Fund (OAF) which teaches better crop management techniques and provides inputs on credit, like seed and fertilizer, to smallholder farmers throughout East Africa. In many cases, the results speak for themselves. In 2015, the average Kenyan farmer in OAF earned $211 (or 48 percent) more than peer farmers not in OAF. Productivity growth for smallholder farmers is essential to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals of ending poverty and achieving food security. Since 2014, OAF has enabled farmers in Kenya to make loan repayments digitally using the mobile money service M-Pesa instead of in cash, increasing economic opportunity and financial inclusion in some of the world’s poorest farming communities.

The case study also examines the challenges of cash repayments for farmers and the One Acre Fund and highlights the solution linked to replacing cash with digital repayments.