Heifer pledges $3.5mn to support tractor financing in Africa

Mazino Dickson, Abuja

On May 20, 2022

Heifer International has pledged $3.5 million to support tractor financing for African farmers.

The funding -tagged Tractors 4 Africa Project – is expected to increase mechanization of smallholder farmers, promoting increased food security and entrepreneurship across Africa.

The investment is being deployed through Heifer International’s Tractors 4 Africa project.

“Increased mechanization – and tractors in particular – are vital as smallholder farmers scale up their production and build profitable and sustainable farming businesses,” said Pierre Ferrari, President and CEO of Heifer International.

“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 funding announcement comes a fortnight after Heifer launched of Hello Tractor’s innovative Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) Tractor financing for agri-entrepreneurs in Nigeria with $1 million.

But this new announcement now takes the organization’s investment in catalytic funding for tractor financing in Africa to $4.5 million.

Agenda

In 2021, Heifer International created the AYuTe Africa Challenge, which awards cash grants annually to the most promising young agritech innovators across Africa.

It also supports Heifer International’s goal of helping more than six million African farmers earn a sustainable living income by 2030.

The AYuTe Africa Challenge $1 million award enabled Hello Tractor to finance 17 tractors for 17 entrepreneurs in three countries – Nigeria, Kenya and Uganda.