BK TecHouse, the digital innovative power of Bank of Kigali Group is set to scale up its Smart Nkunganire System (SNS), to allow farmers improve productivity, following a three-year partnership deal with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

The development was announced on Tuesday, March 2, during a virtual workshop that brought together different stakeholders.

Launched in 2017, SNS is a joint effort to digitize local farmers’ input subsidy programme, under a public-private-partnership arrangement between BKTechouse and the Rwanda Agricultural and Animal Resources Development Board (RAB).

However, under the partnership, officials said that the technology is set to be transformed towards a fully-fledged integrated digital agriculture service platform.

Currently, the platform targets end-to-end digitisation and supply chain management of the input subsidy programme which, among others, entails farmer registration and agro-dealer enrollment; farmer agro-input orders and demand aggregation.

Other features include securing agro-dealer supply and stock management, and related business intelligence reports.

Data from BK TecHouse indicates that over 1.2 million farmers have registered on the platform, with over 1,000 retail agro-dealers as well as 30 fertilizer and seed (agri-SMEs) companies.

"The BMGF partnership will enable BKTechouse further develop, build-out and scale the SNS platform as a country-wide digitally enabled, full-service, agriculture platform through which small scale producers (SSP) and smallholder farmers are able to access, and adopt, effective and affordable agricultural inputs, products and services.” Claude Munyangabo, Managing Director at BK TecHouse noted.

BK TecHouse is set to scale up its Smart Nkunganire System. Photo: Courtesy.

He added, "The partnership will support BKTechouse, in partnership with Rwanda Agriculture and Animal Resources Development Board (and other national and international stakeholders and partners) enhance the features offered on the SNS platform to improve and expand the existing platform capabilities to include financial and advisory services and also market access.”

According to Munyangabo, the move will also facilitate the development of the ecosystems served by SNS by targeting and enabling more partnerships with public and private sector players.

Munyangabo shared similar sentiments with Deputy Director General of Agriculture Research and Technology Transfer at RAB, Dr Charles Bucagu, who cited that transforming Rwanda’s agricultural sector, will among others, play a critical role in the economic growth of the country.

"But one of the pillars of this transformation process of the sector is obviously to make sure that we increase productivity using all kinds of technology but more importantly to make sure that we provide timely and more efficient services to farmers. Most of them are small holder farmers that need quick services but also extension services to sustain their production scheme.”

"For the RAB to be able to achieve this, we see the digitization process a key factor and we have already started this digitalization process together with BK by trying to digitalize the input management programme this is a subsidized government scheme meant to provide input in a subsidized model to ensure farmers access a seed and fertilizer and as a strategy to increase production,” he added.

According to Bucagu, almost 1.2 million have registered on the platform, and all the stakeholders along the seed value chain are all well-informed about the use and major functions of these digital platforms.

Call to scale up the technology

During the meeting, Bucagu commended the support from the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, citing that as a way forward, in connection with this new project we want to see now these systems scaled to also integrate other functions.

"We believe agricultural strategy to increase productivity is not only access to seed and fertilizer but also a combination of other factors including all kinds of services, disease and pest control, access to weather conditions, weather data, soil data, and all kinds of factors that play a major role in a more integrated way to increase productivity.”

"We are ready to disseminate the outcome or the output of this project to ensure that in a few years, farmers will be able to just use their mobile phones and access all kinds of information they actually need to increase productivity.”