Gasabo: Afri-Farmers Market launches new branch in Kibagabaga

By Elias Hakizimana.

Afri-Farmers Market, Rwanda’s social enterprise that provides stable markets to smallholder farmers through e-commerce and capacity building for sustainable agriculture has on Thursday, August 24, 2023, inaugurated its second branch in Kibagabaga after Kimironko.

The official inauguration brought together Afri-Farmers Market team, partners, farmers and suppliers who commended the efforts of this firm in promoting agriculture.

Speaking to the media, Norman Mugisha, Founder and CEO of Afri-Framers Market said the market has reduced struggles and losses of farmers and help citizens to get fresh fruits and other food commodities near their location.

“Now farmers enter their pre-liminary farming activities with hope to get returns as they have our contract, this initiative has reduced over 70 percent losses farmers used to experience,” Mugisha noted.

He added that farmers’ household income increased by 50 percent over the last three years.

“We are bringing selling points to farmers, we target five (5) selling centers in Kigali in the next ten (10) years. We also target to expand the initiative to the neighboring regional countries such as DRC, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Uganda,” Mugisha said.

Afri-Farm Market works with farmers from 15 districts across the country. Since they started activities in May 2020, they employ 30 workers and serve over 5,000 clients at monthly basis.

Their business model while delivering foods allow clients to pay through four payment modes: Bank, cash, card and POS.

Augustin Iragena, President of Tuzamurane-Nyakabanda Vegetable Farmers’ Cooperative based in Rwamagana district testifies how collaboration with Afri-Farm Market has been a response to the struggles they faced before. The cooperative grows tomatoes, cabbages and beetroots among others.

“Today they buy our produce from the field while we used to struggle to take the vegetables to the markets with bicycles or by carrying on heads, a lot could be damaged on the street, for example 20 out of 30 kgs could be damaged; Rwf500,000 investment could be lost due to poor management, but, now due to the capacity building training we got, we can get a profit of Rwf 600,000 when we invest Rwf 600,000,” Iragena said.

Jean Premier Bienvenue Rukundo, an official from the Ministry of Trade (MINICOM) lauds the efforts by Afri-Farm Market, encouraging youth to embrace the use of Technology in daily life.

“We thank Afri-Farm Market for their initiative to help farmers from the seed selection to inputs and capacity building, as well as the fresh transport of commodities to the markets, we hope that in the future this initiative will be expanded from horticulture value chain to other commodities,” Rukundo said.

Currently, around 60 online sites are using ICT for different commodities apart from crops according to MINICOM.

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