Farmers & Markets Systems Platform

eKijiji is the brand name for e-Commercial Villages Model through which Commercial Villages network in Africa. The model is being digitized systematically into a live vibrant platform that virtually brings together farmers, traders and partners focusing on.

Information Sharing| Decision Support | Trading

eKijiji.global is a business ecosystem for domestic, cross-border and international trade partnership platform through private sector as buyer companies, wholesale distributors and service providers for sustainable investment with farmers and Agro-SMEs.

FCI as a private sector business partner facilitates supply chain and rural distribution systems while systematically building capacity of farmer organizations, SMEs and business associations to respond to markets optimizing digital solutions through a cost-share model for scale up.

 

About eKijiji

The eKijiji is a Farm Concern International, FCI platform for digitization of the Commercial Villages Model based on the following parameters targeting farmer organizations, Agro-enterprises for sustainability.

Commercial Villages Model has been tested, implemented and upgraded since 2004 as an innovative integrated business model, designed and developed by FCI. The model is contextualized to Africa’s food distribution & agri-marketing systems. The model focuses on a multi- value chain commercialization approach for food, nutrition, climate adaptation and markets. A Commercial Villages farmer organization comprises of 250-500 farming households clustered into Commercial Zones (CoZos) of 10,000 smallholder farmers for collective mass marketing targeting input/output trade.

eKijiji is a Farm Concern International, FCI platform for digitization & scale-up of the Commercial Villages Model interventions based on the following ongoing directly implemented activities for smallholder farmers, aggregation centres, farmer organizations (FOs) and Agro-enterprises for sustainability.“

 

"Kijiji” is a Swahili word meaning Village

eKijiji is leveraging on the ongoing partnerships between Commercial Villages, Buyers and Service Providers. The platiorm is geo-mapped per county based on the following modules:

• Virtual Aggregation (household storage and aggregation centres)
• Collective Inputs sourcing and distribution (Per type, company & volumes)
• Market Linkages (Formal buyers, informal markets and wholesale food distributors)
• e-Extension and Training (Food, nutrition, agronomic practices, animal husbandry, climate adaptation, entrepreneurship)
• Finance and accountability (Leadership strengthening & record keeping)
• Savings, investments & credit access
• Market Information (Price trends, volumes traded, cost benefit analysis)

FCI came up with an innovative platform known as eKijiji that performs the following functions;

• Links farmers to buyers (trading)
  Users buy and sell commodities on the platform
• Offers agronomic information
  Users can request for agronomic information such as land preparation, planting, pests and diseases, harvest and post-harvest management tips from the platform for specified commodities
• Has access to lending institutions
  The platform has been linked to mobile money services such as M-PESA
• Offers weekly weather information per county
  Farmers receive weather information weekly via SMS, based on their counties
• Offers access to farm inputs
  Farmers are able to source for inputs from the platform and track how far delivery has gone through our commercial village trade facilitators
• Offers access to a cost-benefit analysis tool
  Users who can access the web application have access to a cost-benefit analysis tool
• Offers access to nutrition services
  This feature is available to users on the web platform where they have information about nutrition and value-added services such as food recipes among others
• Access to soil testing services
  Farmers who want to know the condition of the soil in their farms can book for soil testing on the platform.